Bangladesh’s historic state-owned Muslin Cotton Mills has reopened in Gazipur district after the ownership was transferred to Masers Reefat Garments Company.Production was stopped at the largest muslin cotton mill in Asia in 1990 for its failure to pay wages and salaries to its 2,885 workers amid serious mismanagement.

Set up on 100 acres of land on the bank of river Shitalakhya in Kaliganj in 1952, the mill once had three sections — spinning, looming and dyeing.Before its closure, the company used to make fabrics and yarn out of cotton.Speaking at a function to reopen the closed textile mill,Abdul LatifSiddiqui, Minister of Jute and Textiles, said after 24 years of closure the government took an initiative to reopen the historic cotton mill.The Muslin Cotton Mills would generate employment opportunities for 25,000 people in the Gazipur district.

About 50 Turkish textile factories are relocating to Ethiopia. They will be housed in an industrial zone. One such company is Ayka Addis. This is a 25-year-old Turkish international garment firm in close contact with all major garment manufacturers in Turkey. Ayka inaugurated its factory at a cost of $140 million near Addis Ababa, in 2010, creating jobs for more than 10,000 people. It has the capacity to export textile products worth $100 million per annum.

The relocation is expected to create $2 billion worth of export revenue per annum and more than 60,000 job opportunities in Ethipia. The Ethiopian textile and clothing industry has experienced a major expansion drive and several leading retailers are now sourcing their textile and clothing requirements from the country. The list of retailers sourcing from Ethiopia include retailers like Tesco, Primark and H&M. Presently around 10 per cent of Ethiopia’s textile and clothing exports are to the UK. 

The government has set a target of attracting around $1.6 billion in foreign direct investment by 2016 to facilitate the construction of around 200 new textile and clothing units. For expansion, the industry would mainly focus on increasing domestic cotton output. Ethiopia has about three million hectares of land suitable for cotton cultivation. 

A recent report‘Road to 2025: Textile and apparel sector report’, China and India will be the major growth centres for apparel consumption by 2025. The combined size of the Chinese and Indian apparel markets is slated to become bigger than that of US and European Union (EU).“The combined apparel market size of China and India will become $740 billion by 2025, and is expected to surpass the combined market size of US and Europe, which will be $725 billion in 2025,” states the report.

At present the size of apparel market in China and India is estimated at $150 billion and $45 billion, respectively. Both have shown robust growth, despite global uncertainties and slackened demand, says the report.

From 2007 to 2012, the Chinese market posted an annualized growth of 15 per cent whereas the Indian market registered a somewhat lower growth at 12 per cent. However, both have performed better than the other major consumption regions (US, EU and Japan) where the economic conditions led to lower growth in demand.

“Asia has already emerged as the largest manufacturer-supplier hub for textile and apparel products to the world, and the region is on the verge of entering into a new phase wherein its own consumption of textile and apparel products would become large,” the report states.

It goes on to say the key reasons for apparel consumption in the two countries to grow are high economy growth, and consumer income, market development supported by expansion of domestic brands, which have the bandwidth and exposure to go deep into the markets, and high growth of online retail in these countries.

The report also suggests that the consumption level in countries would grow, as the Chinese consumer’s changing preference to buy more for fashion than replacement purpose would increase and Indian consumer’s growing exposure to organized retail and branded merchandise would also increase.

Chinese textile manufacturers are competing to secure import quotas for well-priced and high quality cotton, as the government pressures them to use more expensive lower quality domestic supplies.The spread between Chinese and imported cotton has hit China's textile industry hard. It’s one major reason Chinese manufacturers are becoming much less competitive in the global market. 

In January, the Chinese government imposed a 3:1 rule on manufacturers. By which they had to use three tons of Chinese cotton to secure quotas to buy one ton of imported cotton. The quality of Chinese cotton is much lower than that of imported cotton, which generates more losses in production. 

The goal is to reduce the size of the eight million tons of stocks the Chinese government has bought to assure sufficient local supplies. The policy is already weakening the price of China-made cotton, but with farmers demanding high prices, it is still higher than foreign cotton.

The International Cotton Advisory Committee has warned cotton prices are expected to rise in the 2013-14 season, despite cotton stocks heading towards a new high. The inter-governmental group blamed stockpiling by the Chinese government, and the expected tightening of stocks outside of China.