In the Government Gazette last week, government published the notice of the import restrictions on 31 categories of Chinese clothing imports from September 28 to end-December 2008, giving the public seven days to comment.
Clothing manufacturers and retailers maintained their opposition in principle to the proposal.
They jointly issued a statement after the meeting rejecting the quota system outright, saying it would result in chaos and enormous disruption.
The real enemy, they felt, were not Chinese imports per se but illegal, under-invoiced and suspect trade practices.
Industry had ample warning that quotas were on the way and called on retailers to shoulder some of the burden of stemming job losses in the local, clothing, textile and footwear industries — 67000 since 2003.
Aggregate published profits of the top five clothing retailers had grown from R1, 7bn in 2002 to R6, 6bn this year, partly because of Chinese imports.
Chinese government had accepted the deal and whether the deal can be implemented or not is another question.
A meaningful delay in the implementation date would save the industry billions of rand as many had already placed orders for clothing and fabric from China six to nine months in advance.
Industry has already committed for this and in some cases had already raised letters of credit to pay for the goods.
Unions expressed disappointment that the retail sector, which had led the drive towards a massive rise in imports in the sector and was unwilling to become partners in creating jobs for the unemployed in the country.
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