China-Korea textile & apparel trade volume likely to go up

21 Jul '14

2 min read

The volume of textile and apparel trade between China and South Korea is expected to increase further, following the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to South Korea earlier this month.

Currently, China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, the largest export market, and the largest source of imports. In 2013, the bilateral trade volume between China and South Korea reached US$ 270 billion.

During their talks, President Xi Jinping and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye set the goal of achieving the bilateral trade volume of $300 billion by 2015. Both the sides also agreed to increase efforts for completion of a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two before the end of the current year.

The increasing trade cooperation between China and Korea provides a good opportunity to increase the bilateral textile and garment trade volume between the two countries.

China’s exports of textiles and clothing to South Korea increased from $3.806 billion in 2003 to $6.789 billion in 2013. Last year, China’s textiles and apparel exports to Korea increased by 16.6 percent year-on-year. Of this, clothing exports grew at 21.1 percent year-on-year to $3.95 billion.

On the other hand, China’s imports of textiles and garments from Korea are relatively stable. In 2013, imports decreased by 2.93 percent year-on-year to $2.447 billion.

As traditional textile and apparel producing countries, the textile and garment industry cooperation between South Korea and China in the future will be more diverse.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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