Record Cotton Prices May Curb China Textile Growth, Planer Says

Record gains in prices of cotton and rising labor rates may limit the expansion of China’s textile industry and reduce export competitiveness, according to the National Development & Reform Commission.

In 2010, prices surged to 30,000 yuan ($4,551) per metric ton from 14,000 yuan at the beginning of the year, while labor costs gained as much as 20 percent, the top economic planner said in a report on its website yesterday.

“Raw material and labor shortages are the industry’s bottleneck,” the report said.

A slower rate of recovery of the global economy and world consumer demand, as well as a stronger yuan, will reduce the competitiveness of China’s textile products, the report said.

In 2010, domestic sales took a larger share of the nation’s textile products, the report said. For companies with relatively large output, local sales represented 82 percent of the total, up 2 percentage points from 2008, the report said.

China’s textile mills increased yarn output 14 percent to 27 million tons in 2010 from a year earlier, the report said.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-31/record-cotton-prices-may-curb-china-textile-growth-planer-says.html)