BEIJING, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Profits slipped at Chinese textile firms for the first time in a decade, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, the day after the expiry of U.S. "safeguards" designed to curb a potential surge in textile shipments from China.
China's textile exports could fall by 30 percent in the first quarter of 2009, Xinhua said, citing Fan Min, chief editor of a weekly textile magazine published by the Ministry of Commerce.
Some U.S. textile producers fear that the expiration of the "safeguard quotas", put in place after an international quota system expired in 2005, could allow another flood of competing Chinese textile and clothing exports.
Meanwhile, China's policy makers worry that the global economic crisis, which has triggered bankruptcies or closures at U.S. retailers including Linens 'n' Things, could sharply reduce business for China's labour-intensive textile exporters.
Profitable Chinese textile firms monitored by the National Bureau of Statistics saw a 1.77 percent annual slide in profits in the first 11 months of the year, when they racked up 104.2 billion yuan ($15.27 billion) in profits, Xinhua said on Thursday.
That marked the first time in a decade that profits for textile firms failed to increase.
Meanwhile, loss-making firms, which are accounted separately, saw losses nearly double compared with the same period the year before, to 22.75 billion yuan, Xinhua said. (Reporting by Lucy Hornby)