BEIJING, April 21: Chinese textile exports to the European Union rose “only” 50 per cent in the first three months of the year, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Thursday as the EU mulls whether to put the brakes on imports. “During the first quarter of this year, exports of Chinese textile products towards Europe only increased by 50 per cent. Before, it was 70 per cent,” Wen said, without giving further details.

Europe’s textile industry is pressing the EC to impose safeguard measures to curb a flood of Chinese imports that followed the end of a global quota system on January 1.

A European Commission spokeswoman said last week the EU was waiting for “sufficient data” to decide if a probe was needed, the first step towards applying safeguard measures allowed under World Trade Organization rules.

Claude Veron-Reville, spokeswoman for EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, said a decision was likely in April 25.

China has warned that imposing such limits could harm relations between Brussels and Beijing, and Wen defended China’s efforts to stem exports to satisfy the EU and the United States.

“Since the end of the quotas, we have taken our own initiatives, like increasing customs duties on textile products exported in order to limit our exports,” Wen said at a press conference with his visiting French counterpart Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

In total, China’s textile exports soared 29 per cent in the first three months of the year, with exports to the United States jumping 258 per cent.

On January 1, a 31-year-old textile quota system expired, leaving producers in developed and developing states bracing for a wave of imports from China, whose manufacturers benefit from cheap labour and huge economies of scale.

China, the world’s largest exporter of clothing with 28 per cent of the market, is proving to be the main winner from the end of quotas because it is able to undercut producers with higher costs in other countries.

Meanwhile, Turkish textile and clothing producers asked the European Commission on Thursday to quickly set limits on Chinese textile imports.

“The first wave of Chinese exports to the European market has reached unexpected proportions that show the European Commission... must urgently apply safeguard clauses before all (sector) activity and employment in the Europe-Mediterranean zone is wiped out,” Anatolia press agency quoted the producers’ faxed request as saying.

Turkey is the second biggest textile supplier to the European Union, after China, and the sector represents 32 per cent of all Turkish exports, or a total value of about $15 billion in 2003.

Turkey and the EU signed a customs union that covered textiles in 1996.

The faxed request, which was signed by several Turkish textile groups, asked the EU to ensure that China “respects rules of fair trade”, saying that “least developed and developing countries have already seen their market share drop.”—AFP