Technical Textile Export Income Surpassed 2019 in 8 Months
R&D and innovation investments for technical textiles with 107 billion dollars of export market volume in the world continue unabated while Turkey is running a record in this particular area.
Based on the period of January-August 2020, exports of technical textiles made more than the volume of technical textile exports in Turkey carried out throughout the last year and amounted to a total of 1.8 billion US Dollars.
August figures for the textile industry, which suffered a serious loss in April and May due to the devastating pandemic outbreak, were pleasing. While there was an increase of 6.6 percent in exports of textile and raw materials, an increase of 8.3 percent was observed in exports of home textiles and 5.3 in exports of knitted fabrics in August. However, the most significant increase was that the exports of technical textiles in the period of 1 January-31 August, surpassed technical textiles exports that were carried out from Turkey throughout the whole 2019, reaching an amount of 1.8 billion US Dollars. The sector’s exports for the last 12 months were worth 2.3 billion US Dollars.
Ahmet Öksüz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Istanbul Textile and Raw Materials Exporters Association (ITHIB), expressed that with the revocation of the mandatory grants in the export of personal protective equipment products, the exports of technical textiles will increase and called for the revocation of the compulsory grants for personal protective equipment products.
‘‘Compulsory Grants for the Exports of Personal Protective Equipment Products Should Be Revoked’’
Evaluating the increase in the exports of technical textiles, which offer facilitating solutions to other sectors in areas such as automotive textiles, construction, agriculture, in addition to producing nanotechnological, non-polluting, breathing, heat-retaining textile products, Ahmet Öksüz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ITHIB, indicated that the technical textile industry, which is not dependent on international raw material supply successfully overcame the pandemic exam.
Ahmet Öksüz expressed that they carried out a technical study on textile products purchased by the USA for personal protection against Covid-19 and made the following statement on the subject:
‘‘In the January – August period, we exceeded the annual export volume in technical textile exports, which worth about 1.8 billion US Dollars. Our exports for the last 12 months amounted to 2.3 billion US Dollars. In this context, we aim to raise our target to exceed 2.5 billion US Dollars by the end of 2020 and to reach 3 billion US Dollars export volume by 2021. However, in order to reach our goals, compulsory grant rates must be revoked. The EU’s imports of masks from China have exceeded 10 billion Euros in the last few months. Turkey, unfortunately, is not able to offer competitive prices because of the mandatory grants and China possesses the dominant position in the market. However, there is a compulsory grant condition in the export of personal protective equipment products in Turkey. This grant requirement should be removed as soon as possible. The withdrawal of grants will not be of any significance once the demand for personal protective equipment products has been saturated on a global scale.
We are a pioneering industry with our flexible production structure, logistics capability, and strong adaptability. We cannot utilize our advantages over our competitors due to the current compulsory grant requirement. More than four hundred companies started to manufacture personal protective equipment products within a period of a few months through the production mobilization initiative, which was organized under the Turkish Exporters Assembly. Our sectors, which rapidly increased their capacities pursuant to the needs of the market, have the infrastructure to meet future demands easily.’’