IZMIT, Jan 29 (A.A) - Turkish-Greece Chamber of Commerce said in a report on Tuesday that the export from the companies in the textile and ready-made clothing reached about 10 billion U.S. dollars with an increase of 1.1 percent in 2001.
Pointing out that Turkish textile and ready-made clothing sector's share in Gross National Domestic Product (GNDP), industrial production and employment reached the important numbers, the report said, ''25 percent of around 44,000 companies make exportation. The sector has the share of 4.2 percent in GNDP, 16.3 percent in industrial production and 10.3 percent in employment. The applications encouraging the production in Turkish textile should be given priority when an evaluation is made in this scale.''
The report said that the companies producing in textile sector were among the biggest 500 companies of Turkey.
Turkish-Greece Chamber of Commerce noted in a report that if the textile sector, which had the share of 9.5 percent in total export the previous year, had not been influenced by the economic crisis, the export would have increased more.
The sector had many losses due to the high interest rates in 1999 and 2000 by the grave debt burden.
Those negative effects continued increasingly by the second big economic crisis in 2001. Thus, both local demand shrank and the exportation could not reach the desired level.
According to the search, although, the textile and ready-made clothing sector don't present an extensive perspective, the sector is the one which gets the most encouragement.
The search said that it would be a significant development that Turkish and Greek textile sectors provided the mutual market expansion.
The report said, ''many Turkish textile companies which are powerful are warm to the idea of making cooperation with the companies in foreign countries. Medium scale Turkish companies are the most appropriate companies for the cooperation with the textile companies in Europe and Greece.''