Turkey wants to impose new measures on textile firms importing material from China, alarming leaders of one of the country’s biggest export industries. The textile ministry had been asking for additional documents for textile imports from July but it has been asked to postpone the move until January.

The government plan was aimed partly at tackling Turkey’s widening current account deficit, which reached $47.1 billion last year. The material imported from China was sold to other countries such as Russia and the United States, benefiting Turkey. Turkey imported a quarter of its $10.1 billion textile from China in 2017, more than half of which was cotton fabrics and intermediary goods. The new measures are likely to add costs and cause delays in trade. Turkey’s textile sector is a pillar of its economy. Ready-to-wear clothing accounted for about 18 per cent of Turkey’s $157 billion exports last year.