Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Apr 12, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Apr 12, 2005 |
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Industry & Economy
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Textiles Garment quota abolition — Reality check on fate of poor, quota-dependent countries Sudhanshu Ranade
Chennai , April 11 ACTUALLY there is more than enough to go around. Americans spent $255 billion on clothing in 2002. Total imports of `apparels and accessories' from the rest of the world in 2004 were less than $70 billion. However, given the concern about retaining US jobs, it is widely expected that gains made by countries such as China and India will be more at the cost of other exporters than at the cost of domestic producers, even if this means that US consumers get saddled with dead-weight costs on inferior clothing. As a matter of fact, many poor countries that are heavily dependent on garment exports seem to be holding their own; at least so far. The implication is that losses might tend to be shared between domestic production in the US and exports from richer, higher labour cost, countries like Canada which suffered a 8.3 per cent drop, Hong Kong, which took a hit of more than 26 per cent between January 2004 and January 2005, South Korea, down 17.2 per cent and Taiwan, down 13 per cent. So far as producers in the US itself are concerned, apparel imports increased almost 7 per cent between January 2004 and January 2005; while expenditure on clothing, imported and locally produced, increased less than 2 per cent between 2000 and 2002.
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