The import of textile machinery and parts through the ports of east China’s Jiangsu province was valued at US$210 million during the January-April period, up 40.5 per cent year on year.

That imported by the province’s private enterprises accounted for 19 per cent of the total import value, reaching US$38.41 million and up 4.5 times over a year ago.

Experts point out that main reasons for the drastic rise of the import of textile machinery by private enterprises include:

1) Since March 2007, the state has abolished the automotive import license system set for 23 kinds of textile machinery; and

2) With China reaching agreement on textile trade with the EU and US, domestic textile enterprises, especially private ones, are optimistic on the future of the textile industry and are rushing to introduce textile machinery with high technology content from overseas for their technical upgrading.

Meanwhile, experts are worried that EU and the US will employ measures such as anti-dumping and anti-subsidiary to protect their own textile industry when the EU-China and US-China textile agreements expire from the end of this year. They suggest that home textile enterprises should not be blindly optimistic and excessively expand their production scale.

In the eyes of experts, a new round of reshuffle for the domestic textile industry is likely to come when production capacity is in surplus, the price of raw materials is rising, the yuan is appreciating and the export rebate rate declining.