knitwear
The Swedes
8. Women's wool and synthetic knitwear was put under restraint last summer at 1.675,000 pieces. Men's wool knitwear was put under E.A. surveillance at the same time. In February this year men's wool knitwear was combined with the women's knitwear quota and the total increased to 2,238,000 pieces. now want to reduce the quota to 1,981,000 pieces after excluding imports of 18,000 women's continuous synthetic knitwear, which would be released from control. This would men a reduction of nearly 10 per cent in the quota. discontinuous knitwear would also be subject to E.A.s. Industries 1 have throughout maintained that there was no evidence that ports from Hong Kong had caused inquiry to any section of the domestic industry.
•
Men's
9.
Swedish production and imports of knitwear have been as follows:
1965
1966
1967
1968
Production
Imports
Exports
Consumption
4.547
4,202
4,150
3.479
7.470
9,321
10,170
8,694
315
438
556
1164
11,702
13,085
13,764
11,709
and importa were broken down as follows:
S. Korea
dong Kong
2,549
5,088
4,745
2,714
1.741
1.393
2,072
2,595
Italy
U.k.
1,676
1,365
1,129
947
257
'247
304
354
Fortugal
1
20
134
161
and it is of interest that there was a further reduction in imports from 1.53 million pieces in the first two months of 1968 to 1.40 million in the corresponding period of this year, but within the total the Portugese figure rose from 10,000 to 47,000, Hong Kong fell from 466,000 to 408,000 and 3. Korea fell from 586,000 to 488.000.
10.
It will be seen from, the foregoing that the big increase in imports was between 1965 and 1966 and that this had very little effect on overall production: and that when production fell by 671,000 pieces in 1968, imports also fell by 1,476,000 pieces. The fall in imports was a result of the imposition of restric- tions on imports from South Korea and the fall would have been greater if Hong Kong had not expanded her exports to fill part of the vacuum which had thus been created. The Swedes were demonstrably unable to fill any of the other part. The new arrival on the scene is Fortugal, whose trade was running at an annual rate of 280,000 pieces in the first two months of this year. The Portuguese send A lot of m.m.f. knitwear to this country.
a failure to 11. The Swedish difficulties have in part been of their own making: move into synthetics as quickly as the asiatic producers using cheap Japanese a☛rylic fibre. Imports of wool knitwear have risen, but the correlation between the increase in imports and the decline in production is weak:
Production
Imports
Exports
Consumption
1965
1.115
1966
1967
1968
989
778
433
2.340
2,179
2.654
2,838
169
3.287
144
164
131
3.024
3,268 reswad
3,140
the implication being that consumption would not havelin 1967 renewed if a supply of cheap imports had not been available. The additional imports all came from Hong Kong. The .K. share of the trade remained a rally unaltered at 251,000 pieces in 1968. This very strongly suggests that imports of wool
The knitwear from Hong Kong have not caused inquiry to the domestic industry. Swedes are in a stronger position to compete with Hong kong in their home market
/than we
3.