According to a Chinese government administration official, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China recently issued a document called "written statement concerning the predicament of the textile industry to be overcome," (hereinafter called the statement) and sent it to certain enterprises to the solicit opinions of parties concerned.

The statement includes proposals from the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, China National Textile and Apparel Association, China Cotton Association and the People's Bank of China, and has five main propositions.

(1) To raise export tax rebate rate of textile products from 11% to 13% and that of apparel products from 11% to 15%.

(2) To implement temporary sliding import duties for cotton (announced by Customs tariff Commission of the State Council on May 28 and implemented from June 5 to October 5. With temporary sliding import duty, per-unit tax of relatively costly high-grade cotton is to be lowered by 37.4% from 570 yuan to 357 yuan per 1ton).

(3) Partial textile machines and auto-winding machines are to be exempted from import tariffs.

(4) To limit the acceleration of yuan appreciation.

(5) To finance current capital demand of apparel manufacturers.