Will Africa Become The Next Textile Center?

Recently, the African media Alafrica published the topic entitled "Ethiopia: the next one." Spin A commentary in the industry center? clothing Retailers, such as H&M and Tesco, have already planned to set up garment processing plants in Ethiopia.

Since 2007, Ethiopia's economy has achieved leaping development. The government of Ethiopia also regards the textile industry as a priority area to encourage investment: the country plans to export clothing products to over $1 billion by 2016. The country also welcomes the investment like H&M.

The article said that in recent years, Ethiopia has gradually shown its advantages in the textile industry. Due to the improvement of China's social level, labor costs have also risen, and Ethiopia's labor cost is much cheaper than China, and its geographical location is superior. It can "quickly reach Europe via the Suez canal". For another textile center, Bangladesh, this year's collapse of the Lara shopping center and major fire accidents in garment factories have seriously affected its reputation and the local textile industry. In addition, Ethiopia also has significant production advantages such as high cotton quality and suitable climate.

In fact, many African countries have listed the textile industry as a key development industry, showing their respective advantages in the development of the textile industry: the textile industry in Egypt is a traditional field, Egypt has a relatively complete textile production chain, and the textile market is the best in Africa; in Lesotho, the textile industry has become the largest employment pillar, almost 50% of the formal employment and the labor force is mature; the Namibia government has issued a series of regulations to encourage and protect foreign investment, especially the preferential policies in the export processing zone; the advantages of Mozambique textile industry in attracting foreign investment are mainly the stable domestic politics, the production of high-quality cotton, the low cost of land and labor. More advantageously, the country can provide investors with a share of market access to textiles.

Does this mean that the next textile center will be Africa? How far is Africa from the textile industry center?

Regarding this, Liu Yaozhong, manager of the International Trade Office of the China Federation of textile industry, believes that the great potential of Africa's development of the textile and garment industry has always been a general consensus. However, due to various factors, Africa's development to become the next textile industry center remains to be seen. "From the WorldTradeStatistics of WTO over the years, we can see that Africa's import and export volume in textiles and clothing accounts for a small proportion of world trade. Over the past more than 10 years, some countries in Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, have become a strong participant in the world's textile and clothing free trade and become a strong competitor in China's overseas orders for textiles and clothing. Liu Yaozhong said. "In recent years, although some African countries have achieved rapid development in the textile industry, regardless of China, even if compared with Bangladesh and Vietnam, the disadvantages of African countries are still obvious, including the imperfect industrial chain, weak industrial foundation and high comprehensive production cost." He said. "Industry competitiveness includes many factors such as total factor production efficiency, industrial chain perfection, energy and infrastructure facilities, product design innovation capability, and the level of national law and property rights protection. Taking China as an example, the improvement of international competitiveness of textile and garment industry has gone through several decades of development. For Africa, it is bound to undergo a gradual and gradual development process.

Jiangsu Bauhinia textile Polytron Technologies Inc responsible person also expressed similar views. As a private enterprise that has successfully been abroad and widely recognized by the international community, Bauhinia is now building jute planting and processing areas in Mali. Turning to the competitive edge of the African textile industry, the person in charge thinks that Africa does have an advantage in terms of labor costs, but this is confined to simple labor. For skilled workers, wages are not low or even comparable to domestic labor costs. "I personally believe that Africa will become the next centre of textile industry, which can not be achieved in the short term. The textile industry is a complete industrial chain, covering many upstream and downstream links such as raw material production, spinning mills, weaving factories, printing and dyeing factories, garment factories and so on. If there is no perfect industrial chain, the cost will increase a lot. Compared with China, the textile industry chain in most African countries is not perfect. If importing raw materials from other countries and looking for upstream and downstream enterprises, it will greatly increase production costs. She said, "in order to maximize profits, only upstream and downstream enterprises can join together to form a complete industrial chain."

At present, some Chinese enterprises have passed. Africa The establishment of an industrial park enables domestic textile enterprises to enter Africa in a "tug" way, providing a safe, convenient and sustainable development platform for investment enterprises.

In 2007, approved by the Ministry of Commerce, China's first overseas Park, Yue Mei Textile Industrial Park, was invested and built in the Nigeria free trade area. In March 30, 2009, the Botswana Textile Industrial Park, established by Dagen group of another textile enterprise in Zhuji, held the foundation laying ceremony. In November 2009, the Henan Hao De Industrial Co., Ltd. was awarded the "certificate of enterprise overseas investment" issued by the Ministry of Commerce, and Mozambique Henan Hao De Industrial Co., Ltd. was set up in Maputo, capital of Mozambique. The Mozambique Henan Hao De Industrial Park is located in the maharac area of its capital Maputo, mainly engaged in textile, planting and other comprehensive industrial production.

It is seen that the great potential of African textile industry is that Chinese enterprises either invest individually or in groups. For those interested in investing in the African textile industry, the person in charge suggested that enterprises should take full account of local infrastructure such as water, electricity and transportation and local investment regulations. "The biggest headache for us is energy. In Africa, Nigeria is relatively advanced in terms of power generation, but power cuts are still frequent in the summer peak period, which will increase investment costs. We have a small power plant in Mali. For some large enterprises, there is a need to build a small power plant. These are the costs that need to be considered. She said.

Liu Yaozhong suggested textile enterprises. Investment Africa must carefully and meticulously do due diligence, combine the investment in Africa with the development strategy of enterprises, and not blindly move. When choosing a country of investment, we should take into consideration the factors of political stability, the rule of law environment, the perfection of supply chain, the comprehensive production cost, the talent reserve and logistics and so on. In addition, he believes that China's textile enterprises should take into account the factors of market access costs and take preferential measures to choose countries that have preferential regional trade arrangements with export target markets. For example, the main export to the US should be the beneficiary countries of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).