GENEVA — Developing economies’ exports of textiles, apparel, jewelry and other luxury goods posted big gains from 2000 to 2010, and the upward trend is projected to continue over the next 10 years as emerging nations such as China dominate growth in these sectors, United Nations and industry experts say.
In the same period, exports from industrialized countries registered smaller increases and lost global market dominance in many product sectors to emerging competitors, with the exception of the watch industry, where nearly double-digit growth helped rich countries increase their global market more than 11 percent.
In the equally brand-dominated fragrance and cosmetics export sector, strong growth in shipments by rich countries helped them finish the decade with about 75 percent of the global market, although they witnessed an erosion of some market share to even more robust emerging competitors.
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Francesco Marchi, director general of the European apparel and textile confederation known as Euratex, said in an interview that European textile and apparel exports will continue to “shrink” unless there is improved market access to major emerging markets such as China and India.
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A recent report on the global luxury goods market by Nathalie Longuet, analyst at the Swiss private bank Lombard Odier, estimated emerging market consumers are expected to account for 65 percent of sector sales by 2020, with the Chinese contributing 40 percent of the growth over the next decade.
“Global brands appear best positioned to capture this new significant growth opportunity,” Longuet said.
Marchi said access to the big emerging markets is “always difficult and not stable,” and argued that making inroads is vital for many of Euratex’s 170,000 member companies that produce high value-added products, of which about 20 percent is sold outside Europe. He said free trade agreements by the European Union with major emerging countries such as India are likely to create export opportunities for European producers, and added that Euratex favors pushing ahead on this front.
On the prospects for textiles and apparel in 2012, Marchi said European markets “are overcrowded by a lot of production,” and noted the outlook for consumption in Europe “is rather bleak,” and anticipates a reduction in prices and also in the volume of production in both sectors. Overall, in the first decade of this century, global exports of women’s knitted and crocheted apparel grew by an annual average rate of 10.8 percent to reach $45.8 billion in 2010, up from $18 billion in 2000, new U.N. data shows.
The annual “Handbook of Statistics 2011,” published in December by the U.N. Conference on Trade & Development, outlines that developing countries increased their shipments of knitted and crocheted apparel 12 percent to $35.4 billion, and helped spike their global share to 77.3 percent. Industrialized nations’ exports expanded only 7.9 percent to $9.9 billion, for a 21.8 percent share, down from nearly 30 percent share a decade earlier.
Similarly, global exports of women’s woven apparel grew 6.2 percent to $74.4 billion, with developing countries accounting for 66.6 percent share of $49.6 billion world exports, UNCTAD said.
The handbook reveals that emerging countries also expanded their dominance in global exports of yarn, woven cotton fabrics and man-made woven fabrics. Global yarn exports grew more than 4 percent annually to $50.3 billion, with developing country exports increasing 6.2 percent to $31.9 billion, or a 63.4 percent global share, up 11 percent from 2000, while rich country exports advanced 1.6 percent to $17.1 billion, or a 34 percent share, down from 46 percent.
The shift was even more pronounced in global exports of woven cotton fabrics, with the value of emerging country shipments increasing 6 percent to $22.9 billion, for a 72.2 percent world share compared with 55.9 percent at the beginning of the decade, while industrialized countries’ shipments of cotton fabric fell 2.3 percent annually on average to $8.2 billion, representing a 16 percent decrease in global share to 26.2 percent.
In the robust global jewelry market, emerging exporters notched annual increases of 18.1 percent to reach $45.4 billion, or 57.3 percent of world share, up from 41.2 percent. Rich nations registered an average increase of 10.7 percent in exports to $33.7 billion, for a 42.4 percent share of total world jewelry exports, down from 58.6 percent.
In the watch and clock sector, rich economies’ exports grew 9.3 percent annually to reach $23.3 billion, or 63.2 percent share of total exports, up from 52.6 percent, while emerging exporters posted an increase of 3.8 percent to $13.5 billion, for a 36.6 percent share of the market, down from 47.2 percent.
In the fragrance and cosmetics market, exports from rich nations expanded an average of 10.7 percent to hit $51.3 billion in 2010, accounting for 77.4 percent share, as emerging nations’ shipments surged 17.2 percent per year to $14.3 billion, for a 21.4 percent share of the global export market, up from a 13.2 percent share in the period.