The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles (CCCT) has released results of the bidding for 2006 export quotas on 21 categories of textiles to the United States. Five coastal regions received the vast majority of the quotas.

The textile quota granted to China's five major manufacturing bases -- Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces and Shanghai Municipality -- was 822.27 million square meters of fabric, accounting for 84.35 percent of the total.

Eastern Zhejiang Province got the largest share for fabric quota to the US, which was more than 33 percent of the total, while southern Guangdong Province gained the largest share for apparel quota, which was 22.84 percent.

The company that won the largest share got 10.24 million square meters of fabric, accounting for 1.05 percent of the total. The company that received the smallest share got a quota of only 76 square meters of fabric. The average quota distribution to each company was 47,600 square meters.

According to information released by the CCCT Bidding Office, a majority of textile products reported a reasonably high bid price. For example, the bid price for men's woolen trousers under the No 447 category was 192 yuan per package, 15 times more than the minimum start price

Last week, about 28,296 qualified textile enterprises made their bids online. The heated bidding resulted in Internet congestion and forced the CCCT to extend the bidding period by a day.

By virtue of a three-year agreement signed by the US and China in early November, a total of 21 types of clothing and textiles have been placed under the import restrictions. The agreement provides for a progressive increase in imports of major textiles and apparel products from China -- by 10 to 15 percent in 2006, 12.5 to 16 percent in 2007, and 15 to 17 percent in 2008.

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2005)