Sliding euro hits Turkish garment export sector

15 Jul '15

3 min read

Export earning of Turkey's ready-to-wear clothing sector has taken a massive hit due to the weakening euro. The sector suffered a loss of $1.2 billion in export losses year-on-year in the first half of this year, the Turkish media reported quoting a press release issued by the Istanbul Apparel Exporters Association (IHKIB).

Even though eurozone countries and its most highly indebted member Greece seem to have compromised on a solution that may be able to overhaul the ongoing debt crisis on the continent, the continuing depreciation of the euro against the US dollar has already had adverse impacts on Turkish exports.

The ready-to-wear textile exports of Turkish firms slumped, on a unit basis, by 85 million in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period a year ago and stood at 3.565 billion.

IHKIB President Hikmet Tanriverdi said the total export volume of the sector faced a 13.3 per cent decrease year-on-year and fell from $9.4 billion to $8.2 billion in the first half of the year.

Tanriverdi said that the losses were mostly due to fluctuations in the euro-dollar parity, and added that yearly losses would drop to as low as 1.8 per cent when compared using a parity-adjusted calculation.

“We sold $6.4 billion worth of clothing to the EU countries ranked among the top 10 (export partners of the industry) in the January-June period of last year. The same amount stood at $5.3 billion this year. While only our Romania-bound exports showed an increase, there is a decline in exports going to Germany, the UK, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Denmark and Belgium,” Tanriverdi said.

In the first half of this year, the Turkish apparel sector suffered a 23.6 per cent loss in the volume of exports to Germany, 28.2 per cent to France, 28.5 per cent to Denmark and 25.7 per cent to Belgium. Germany is the leading trade partner in the industry with $1.6 billion worth of exports recorded in the first half of 2015.

“Russia is also among the countries where we recorded losses. Exports to one of the most crucial markets, Russia, declined by 43.3 per cent in the first six months of 2015 due to the Ukrainian crisis and the depreciation of the ruble.”

The volume of Russian-bound exports in the sector dropped from $190.2 million to $107.8 million in the same period.

On the other hand, Lithuania and Iran were the two countries where the sectoral export volume posted the highest percentage increases. While the volume of Lithuanian-bound exports jumped from $7.2 million to $72.4 million, the value of those sold to Iran rose from $25.3 million to $56.8 million. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India

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