While making a speech on behalf of exporters' unions and 13 sector associations, Istanbul Ready-to-Wear and Apparel Exporters' Association (İHKİB) President Mustafa Gültepe warned about the additional taxes and said that elimination of taxes on yarn imports and the close monitoring of cotton and cotton yarn exports should be enforced.
Tremendous Price Increase
While emphasizing on the tremendous increase in raw material prices, specifically in cotton and cotton yarn, urgent call was on monitoring cotton and cotton yarn exports and the elimination of taxes on yarn imports. Gültepe said, ‘’When we look closer to the 10 month average, export pricing for fiber was at 2 dollars, yarn was at 4 dollars and fabric was in between 6-7 dollars. But if we could process these goods and turned them into ready-made clothing and apparel, we would sell them at around 16-17 dollars, and in this way we could save much more foreign currency for our country by tripling our value-added exports.’’
We Have a Problem in our Supply
While pointing out the rising yarn prices, Gültepe said, ‘’Commodity prices in international markets have risen by 20 per cent on an average in the year prior. As this rate was around 35-40 percent in Turkey. This figure indicates that we are confronting much higher price increase in cotton and cotton yarn. In consistent with these figures, cotton price has increased by 57 percent globally and 86'6 percent locally. In terms of cotton yarn, the market rate was around 0.80 - 1 dollar domestically while in comparison to the global markets. Supply is another issue apart from pricing. Once we could bring in raw materials in just two-three weeks but now we have to bear extended delivery period of up to 4-5 weeks. Due to the difficulties we are facing in the supply of raw materials, delivery and logistics time period getting longer that is forcing us to turn down our orders in some deliveries.’’
Exports should be controlled
While sharing data about the cotton and cotton yarn exports in which huge increase has been a reality in a time period ready-made clothing and apparel industry was in need of it the most, Gültepe said the following, ‘’To highlight, in the months between January-October, cotton yarn exports increased by 68.4 percent compared to 2020 and by 30.4 percent compared to 2019. Of course we have no issue with exports. But our main goal is to be on value-added exports. When we look closer to the 10 month average, export pricing for fiber was at 2 dollars, yarn was at 4 dollars and fabric was in between 6-7 dollars. But if we could process these goods and turned them into ready-made clothing and apparel, we would sell them at around 16-17 dollars, and we could save in this way much more foreign currency for our country by tripling our value-added exports. The reality is in front of us. Our loss is not only value-added exports. At the same time, we are also losing our competitive power in global markets due to the short-term gains. Because our main export markets for yarn and fiber are Portugal, Italy, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt that are our rivals as well.. I would like to emphasize on the point that 56.6 percent of our total cotton yarn exports were made to these 5 countries in the January-October period.’’
