| China, EU fail to reach textile agreement |
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| Friday,August 26,2005 Posted: 14:42 BJT(0642 GMT) China Daily |
BEIJING, Aug. 26 - China and the European Union failed to reach an agreement yesterday at talks in Beijing aimed at solving the current textile impasse.
A Chinese shopper checks out cloth at a textile shop in Beijing yesterday.
The two sides conducted serious talks towards an effective solution to the thorny issue, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said in a statement.
The Chinese side expressed great concern over the Chinese textile stockpile at EU customs, while the EU admitted the policy did not meet the interests of its domestic traders and consumers, MOFCOM said.
The EU delegation was headed by Fritz-Harald Wenig, the trade director of the European Commission. Chinese negotiators were led by the director of MOFCOM's foreign trade department, Lu Jianhua.
According to statistics published by EU customs on Wednesday, eight of 10 categories of Chinese textiles have already reached their quota limit, set in June.
The June agreement restricts annual growth of EU textile imports from China to 8 - 12.5 per cent over the coming three years.
Forty-eight million sweaters, 17 million pairs of trousers and hundreds of tons of other textile products are piling up at EU borders, unable to access the market, statistics from EU show.
The two sides have to consider how many categories will be covered by the new amendment; and whether to increase the quotas for this year or to start eating into the quotas for next year, said Mei Xinyu, a trade analyzer form the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Co-operation, the think tank of MOFCOM.
If they decide to use the quotas from next year, the two sides have to take into account whether this will result in additional troubles in 2006, he added.
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