Turkey : Banks unsupportive to the concerns of the troubled textile sector

While domestic markets are shrinking due to uninterrupted cheap Chinese imports, Turkey's textile exports and imports face a double whammy with financial crisis plaguing the industry. As a consequence textile makers are fast losing their pride position among country's top 500 industrial establishments, thanks to the banks to the unsupportive banks! The industry insiders say that though their sector earns about $14 billion in foreign exchange, the banks shy from fininacing them and offer only three percent of bank credits. Banks instead of offering credits to the companies, merely offer credit cards to their employees two or three times higher limits than their salaries. All this makes Turkey's Clothing Industrialists Association President Aynur Bektas wary that banks are treating the textile sector unfairly. The textile sector uses only 2.7 percent of bank credits says Bektas, yet it is a disciplined debtor. Oktay Eryilmaz, the Knitwear Industrialists Association President, complains that banks disregarded textile and ready-to-wear clothing sector in Turkey, adding that better administered textile companies face hurdles obtaining bank credits. In fact, industry in general rues the fact that it is easier facing threat from cheap Chinese imports than fight the uncooperative banking sector of the country.