Record Cotton Prices May Curb China Textile Growth, Planer Says-Texglobe

Record Cotton Prices May Curb China Textile Growth, Planer Says

Updated: 2011-1-31 Source: Bloomberg

Business Exchange Buzz up! Digg Print Email Record gains in prices of cotton and
rising labor rates may limit the expansion of China’s textile industry and
reduce export competitiveness, according to the National Development & Reform
Commission.
In 2010, prices surged to 30,000 yuan ($4,551) per metric ton from 14,000 yuan
at the beginning of the year, while labor costs gained as much as 20 percent,
the top economic planner said in a report on its website yesterday.
“Raw material and labor shortages are the industry’s bottleneck,” the report
said.
A slower rate of recovery of the global economy and world consumer demand, as
well as a stronger yuan, will reduce the competitiveness of China’s textile
products, the report said.
In 2010, domestic sales took a larger share of the nation’s textile products,
the report said. For companies with relatively large output, local sales
represented 82 percent of the total, up 2 percentage points from 2008, the
report said.
China’s textile mills increased yarn output 14 percent to 27 million tons in
2010 from a year earlier, the report said.