By Dai Yan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-09-18 15:51

Fewer Chinese textile manufacturers took part in the third bidding for quotas to export to the United States. Their diminished passion is the result of the recently lowered export tax rebate for garments, export limits for processed yarn and cloth, and appreciation of the yuan, said a veteran analyst.

The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles announced the bidding results to the US yesterday. Altogether 2,263 manufacturers nationwide won the bidding, accounting for 76.71 percent of qualified exporters.

Participation levels dropped by at least five percent compared with the past two biddings this year, according to Wang Qianjin, general manager of webtextiles.com, the Chinese textile industry web portal.

The textile export bidders were attracted to a handful of popular categories of exports going to the US. Exporters of cotton trousers and fiber woven shirts won bids for 93 percent of the quotas in these categories, while the bidders only won less than 60 percent of those for bras and plant fiber trousers.

China lowered the export tax rebate rate for garments to 11 percent from July 1, and listed yarn and cloth as processed goods subject to export limits in August, impacting textile exporters, said Wang.

The rising yuan also held back exporters, he added. Textiles and garment export growth is expected to slow down in the fourth quarter of the year.

The top five municipalities and provinces by the number of bid winners were Guangdong (817), Zhejiang (461), Jiangsu (355), Shanghai (201), and Shandong (118).

In the first seven months, conventional trade value grew faster than the processing trade value of textiles and garment exports, and accounted for 72 percent of the total.

The European Union was China's largest textiles and garment export destination, followed by the US, Hong Kong and Japan. The four locations accounted for 54 percent of the total export value.