Sun Ruizhe, president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, first expressed his desire to cooperate with Kenya and achieve common development. He also hoped that more textile and garment enterprises would invest in Kenya.
Sun Ruizhe expressed deep sympathy for Kenya's elaboration of the difficulties in the development of its textile and apparel industry. He said: "In fact, the Chinese textile industry also faces many challenges. We must first clarify two questions: Where to go? How to go?"
When talking about China-Africa cooperation, Sun Ruizhe said that during the just-concluded China-Africa Cooperation Forum, China’s second round of assistance to Africa was 60 billion U.S. dollars, reflecting China’s responsibility as a big country. China has the largest textile industry in the world and will do things that have not been done before.
On the one hand, China's textile industry is very important to China, especially in safeguarding national economic stability, promoting employment, and exporting foreign exchange. “The number of employees in China's textile industry exceeds 20 million, accounting for 10% of the national manufacturing industry, accounting for 12% of China's total exports, and contributing 3% to GDP. In the past 17 years, the textile and apparel industry has net exports to China. The contribution rate of income is 75%. But now, China's textile industry is also facing its own problems, such as rising labor costs and environmental pressure."
He said that since China launched the "One Belt, One Road" initiative five years ago, China's textile industry has been at the forefront of the country in going global. Investment in the “Belt and Road” accounted for 7% of the overall investment, and countries investing in Africa include Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Speaking of Kenya's investment environment, Sun Ruizhe first affirmed Kenya's policy support for the development of the textile industry. At the same time, he also pointed out some problems in Kenya's investment:
The first is the preferential policy. The policy is very important, but the preferential policies are far from enough, depending on the sustainability and persistence of the policy;
Followed by skilled workers. Kenya has sufficient labor resources, but only the quantitative support is far from enough. Industrial development cannot be separated from the support of skilled workers.
Finally, the vertical integration of the supply chain. He said that China's textile industry originated in the coastal areas. In the past few decades, it has gradually formed clusters in the market demand. Only now has a complete industrial chain been formed. This is not a one-time process, but it takes a long time to accumulate.
For Kenya, the development of the garment industry is the most important. Kenya will extend the upstream industries such as printing and dyeing and weaving through garments.
He hopes that Kenya will develop a textile industry with patience and gradual progress.
The talks between the two sides on the textile and garment industry have provided a powerful help to Chinese companies to further understand the investment environment in Kenya and to seek cooperation points from China Textile. Both sides look forward to more and closer cooperation in the future.
