Japanese exporters may be suffering from the historically high yen – which traded at a record JPY84 to the dollar this week – but for Japanese apparel importers and retailers it is a boom time.
Around 35% of major apparel makers in Japan said they will shift their production or development centres overseas if the US dollar remains at the JPY85 level, a survey by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed Friday, while near 60% said that they will expand their overseas production ratio.
Following the hollowing out of the textile and apparel industry here, much of Japan’s manufacturing has gone abroad, and particularly to China and SE Asia.
The finance ministry’s latest figures showed that imports in July rose 15.7% to JPY5.18trn yen ($61.5bn), resulting in a trade surplus of JPY804.2bn ($9.5bn). No recent figures were available for apparel alone but Japan has been transformed in recent decades from a major exporter of textiles and clothing to a major importer.
Although there aren’t sufficient reports on Japan’s investment value in China’s textile industry, over US$5bn out of US$10.2bn of Japan’s cumulative investment value in the overseas textile sector has been invested in China, according to Parfields Research.
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By GlobalData
