The latest figures from the Spanish textile research company Centro de Informacion Textil y de Confeccion (Cityc) have revealed that Spain's textile and clothing industry production and employment has continued to drop in numbers as more companies were closed due to stalling exports and increasing imports in 2005.

For the whole year, preliminary numbers showed that textile and clothing exports inched up 0.4 percent to €6.5 billion, while imports rose 7.8 percent to €10.7 billion. As a general trend, both exports and imports are falling in the fibre and textiles sectors.

Fibres are badly hit with exports down 18 percent to €210 million and imports down 14.2 percent to €290 million.

The strongest growth was seen in clothing imports, which were up 14.8 percent to €7.7 billion against 2004. On the other hand, exports grew only 4.5 percent to €3.6 billion.

As a result, Spain's production in textile and clothing industry dropped 9.5 percent to €11.6 billion and its trade deficit deepened 21.7 percent to €4.2 billion. Employment fell 8 percent to 223,800 last year.

According to Cityc, the shutting down of most companies over the past five years resulted to a 30 percent drop in production and the loss of more than 50,000 jobs.

First nine months of 2005 final figures show that textile and clothing exports rose 0.2 percent to €4.97 billion, while imports increased by 9.6 percent to €8.3 billion.

Fibre2fashion.com