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Turkey :Turks say speed will keep them ahead of China |
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2004-7-26
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At times, proximity favours all. And so claims Turkey with its largest market, the European Union, likely to shelter it from the full impact of the abolition of textile import quotas.
With $12bn (€9.8bn, £6.5bn) worth textiles exports, Turkey is the world''s fifth largest textile exporter after China, the EU, the US and South Korea in the year 2003. More than 75 per cent of textile exports go to the EU, with which Turkey has had a customs union since 1995.
As per Yilmaz Kucukcalik, a textile manufacturer, "China cannot compete with us in Europe. In Europe, competition will be among the most agile manufacturers, not among the cheapest."
Long experience in the European market has provided Turkish producers a natural advantage. This is especially so in fashion-sensitive clothing, he says, where fast product turnaround and short delivery times are critical.
Another advantage the Turks enjoy is in domestic textile goods such as curtains, where labour input is low.
"It is impossible for the Chinese to be as fast in delivery as the Turks," says Ahmet Sapmaz, Kucukcalik''s export manager. "What the Chinese can deliver in six months we can in six weeks. In home textiles there are some companies that cut delivery time to two weeks."
In March this year, Turkey''s major textile and clothing associations joined their US counterparts to call on the World Trade Organisation "to prevent a global take-over of textile and apparel trade by a few large supplier countries". In a letter addressed to the director-general of the WTO, they called for an extension of the textile and clothing quota phase-out process until January 2008.
Umut Onaran, chairman of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers'' Association, said that unless support was forthcoming from the government "2005 could be a year full of disasters."
The trade minister Kursad Tuzmen gave little indication as to what the government would do saying, "The main challenge to textile manufacturers came not from China but from the fact that input prices in Turkey were above the world average. We must create the conditions of China at home."
Meanwhile, Turkish exporters had a foretaste of Chinese competition in the US, which traditionally accounts for about 10 per cent of their exports. The exports to the US in the first half of this year fell by 7 per cent.
"There are two principal reasons for this," said the Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporters'' Union, "the overvaluation of the Turkish Lira and the fact that Chinese competition in the US market was more felt more severely." |
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