Statement presented by the Hone Fong Textile and Apparel Industries Lelegation to the
Hon Kichel Heucher, Under Jecretory of State at the Deportment of "rele on 23rd June 1977.
This delegation represents 13 textiles and clothing manu-
facturers' association in HongKong, whose members cover the bulk
of Hong Kong's textiles and clothing industries.
The views which
I express are therefore those not only of the group of people you
see here but those of the Hong Yong textiles and garment indust-
ries as a whole.
2. We know that you are already familiar with Hong Kong's very
heavy reliance on exports and in particular on exports of texil.c
and clothing products. I do not intend therefore to repeat the
facts and figures in detail but would simply like to point out
that Hong Kong's exports of textiles and clothing account for over half of the value of her total exports. Correspondingly
our textiles and clothing industry provides jobs for almost half
of our industrial labour force and represents about half of our
total industrial production.
3.. Our textiles and clothing exports are heavily dependent
on two major overseas markets the C-nd the USA. In 1976,
36 by value of our textiles and clothing exports went to the
BRC, including 13 to the U; and 30 went to the USA.
You can see from these figures that unfavourable develor-
ments in our two biggest overseas markets have far-reaching
effects on our economy as a whole. At present the bulk of our
textiles and clothing exports to these two markets are covered by bilateral export restraint agreements concluded under the
Kulti-ibre Arrangement the MFA. These two agreements as well