Global Ready Made Garments exports have experienced extraordinarily high rates of growth, along with the continual entry of new suppliers.

Global export of textiles and ready-made garment (RMG) exceeds US $ 300 billion per year, well over one-third of which is accounted for by developing countries. Growth was particularly dramatic in China with exports increasing several times over previous years, for Mexico and Turkey, for Mauritius and Jamaica, as well as the better known cases of East and South-East Asia.

The value of world garments exports is estimated to have been $166 billion in 1996 (WTO 1998, vol. 2, p. 132).4Until the end of the 1980s the top four garment exporters were Hong Kong, Italy, Republic of Korea, and Taiwan. China emerged as a leading exporter in the second half of the 1980s and today occupies the number one position in the world. In 1995 China and Hong Kong together had a share of 21.2 per cent of the world markets, and they pose a formidable challenge to other developing countries.

The United States and the EU together imported more than 70 per cent of world's clothing imports in 1996. In that year the United States and the EU imported clothing worth $43.3 billion and $80.9 billion respectively (WTO 1998, vol. 2, p. 133).5

China emerging as a major supplier of clothing is a big worry. It is the largest garment exporter in the world and its share in the world garment exports amount to 20 per cent. Several developing countries such as India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, East European countries and Turkey are all becoming sizeable producers of ready made garments.

Experts believe that the 2004 phase out of apparel export quotas currently in place under the multi-fiber agreement (MFA), garment manufacturing will shift to China at such a scale that it will become the producer of half the world's garments by the end of 2005.