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Textile, garments |
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| SECTOR PERSPECTIVES
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Textile, garments |
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Textiles – firstly as a craft industry, then a manufacturing industry - is a tradition of Mediterranean countries. For more than 20 years, trade in the textiles clothing industry (TC) have been very important between them and the European Union. As a proof, TC products provide 50 % of manufacturing exports from the MEDA region towards the EU. |
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Textile, garnments |
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Textile, garnments
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Presentation |
Textiles – firstly as a craft industry, then a manufacturing industry - is a tradition of Mediterranean countries. For more than 20 years, trade in the textiles clothing industry (TC) have been very important between them and the European Union. As a proof, TC products provide 50 % of manufacturing exports from the MEDA region towards the EU. The main clients are France, Germany, Belgium and Spain. This partnership should be further reinforced to face up to the competition from Asia, especially since China’s membership of the WTO and the programmed end of the Multi Fibre Arrangement.
Main assets of the Mediterranean area, cheap labour and the geographical and cultural proximity of the European market. The Mediterranean countries may also respond in less than ten days to a top-up order, a strong argument for « fashion » articles. Furthermore, each of the Mediterranean countries has created its own speciality : hosiery products for Turkey, Morocco and Egypt, jeans for Tunisia and Turkey and finally tee shirts for Turkey, Syria and Egypt. Turkey, Syria and Egypt are also producers of cotton.
Among the 300 largest world companies in the textiles and clothing sector, nineteen originate from Turkey, two from Egypt, two from Israel and one from Syria. Turkey provides more than half the textiles and clothing production in the Mediterranean. In total the Mediterranean countries export 18 billion dollars’ worth of textiles and clothing (2002).
The agreement on textiles and clothing (ATC) signed in Marrakech in 1995 plans the phasing out of all quantitative restrictions on this trade between now and 2005. Confronted with the challenge of greater competition on the European market and their domestic markets, the Mediterranean industries must modernise. They can only succeed in this by making alliances with foreign partners. |
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Country focus |
40 billion Euros : That is the annual turnover of production in the Mediterranean. Turkey takes the first place among Mediterranean countries, by providing a little more than half of this production. Textile and clothing count for 40 % of Turkish exports and employ 2 million people. The main advantage of Turkey is not the low salaries but the quality of its industrial fabric. The country has made a great effort to modernise during the course of the 90s. The result is that the businesses are assured of finding on site all the supplies that they need. But despite great efforts of modernisation and productivity, the textile sector imports more than 2. 7 billion dollars’ worth of raw materials (fibres, thread, material).
Textiles are a pillar of the Tunisian economy. The efforts of modernisation and the arrival of foreign investors are a few positive signs. Tunisia imports textile fibres, thread and material, as well as accessories destined for the clothes industry. During the years to come, this trade should continue and tern towards more technical, more sophisticated materials, hence with greater added value. In order that Tunisian businesses become more competitive, they will need to integrate the weaving activity which has increased in the past two years, but insufficiently. In the same way, knitwear, which is very little developed compared with other countries is also a buoyant segment of the market.
To attract foreign investors in textiles, Morocco can count on tax exoneration for exporting companies and on the creation of free trade areas. Today, textiles remains the main industrial activity of the country, but suffers from the competition of Asian countries, where wages are much lower.
With a production which is close one million tonnes per annum, Syria is one of the leading producers of raw cotton in the world. The industry employs 15 % of the working population. However, the country does not produce textile machinery.
Since the beginning of 2002, it is to be noticed that in Algeria textile activity in the private sector has picked up. The reopening of factories closed for safety reasons provides opportunities for investors. Among the assets of the sector, large production capacity and abundant and cheap labour. |
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