Main economic indicators of China's home textile industry suffered a drastic setback in growth in the first two months of 2009, according to a survey on 2,414 home textile enterprises conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics.

From January to February, the total industrial output value of the home textile industry edged up 3.36 per cent from a year earlier to 21.47 billion yuan, with the growth rate 17 percentage points lower than that for the entire year of 2008. Sales value increased 4.25 per cent to 21.32 billion yuan, 16 percentage points lower than 2008. Goods delivered for export dropped 8.79 per cent to 6.32 billion yuan, down 12.39 percentage points from 2008.

In the meanwhile, the home textile sector achieved a faster profit growth and a higher profit ratio compared with the whole textile industry.

The total profits of home textile sector amounted to 816 million yuan in the first two months, up 5.09 per cent year on year, in sharp comparison with the 11.01 per cent slowdown for the entire textile industry during the period. Profit ratio reached 3.92 per cent, higher than 2.94 per cent for the textile industry in general. Sales ratio went down two percentage points from the previous-year's period to 99.27 per cent.

According to China Home Textile Association, home textile exports are facing higher risks and domestic market is under bigger pressure, as demand is shrinking in both developed countries and new emerging markets amid the global financial crisis.

Customs statistics show that China exported 2.63 billion U.S. dollar worth of home textile products from January to February, down 17.56 per cent from the same period last year. Imports fell 8.03 per cent to 143 million dollars.

According to statistics, top 10 importer of Chinese home textile products were the U.S., E.U., Japan, United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Australia, Russia, China's Hong Kong and Canada, which together imported 1.99 billion dollar worth of home textile products from China, accounting for 75.76 per cent of total export of the country.

The top five home textile exporting provinces and municipalities included Zhejiang Province, Shandong Province, Jiangsu Province, Shanghai Municipality and Guangdong Province. The combined exports of the five reached 2.05 billion dollars, claiming 78.1 per cent of total national exports.

China's home textile enterprises has benefited from the raised export rebate rate and falling raw material prices, and managed to achieve profit growth despite market downturn.

At the same time, enterprises are still in need of further support including higher export rebate rate, cut in customs charges, free and easy financing environment and stimulus policies on quality product development, structural adjustment and industrial upgrade.