The Maltese textile industry and the export markets

Abstract

Textiles have long been regarded, with some reason, as one of the forefronts of Malta's industrial development. At the same time, however, any leading industry in Malta must be studied in the context of its export performance. This is because, for various reasons, any industry must necessarily be export-oriented if it is to have any significant impact on Malta's economic development. These are, therefore, the main lines of emphasis on which I have based this dissertation. In Chapter l I tried to measure in some detail the impact of the textile industry on Malta's economic development. At the same time I tried to point out the characteristics of this industry which make it particularly attractive to Malta's developing economy. In Chapter 2 I tried to analyse the behaviour of the textile industry in Malta over nine years (1965-1973) in terms of the degree of emphasis placed on the export of different textile items. Here I divided our textile exports into two main categories: textile materials and clothing. I have shown how, over the period considered, we have seen a massive shift in emphasis from the production of textile materials to clothing. I have also here suggested some reasons for this shift. In Chapter 3 I moved on to study the markets for the various items in our textile exports. The aims of this chapter were twofold. The first was to identify the major markets for our textile exports and examine their characteristics; and also to indicate the potentially important markets which have not yet been touched by Maltese textile exporters. The second and more important aim was to measure the degree of "rationality'' in the choice of these markets and their stability, or otherwise, for Maltese exporters over a number of years.

In Chapter 4 I tried to go into what I consider to be one of the main causes of the characteristics illustrated in the previous chapter. This is the nature of the marketing effort in the Maltese textile industry. In this chapter I tried to illustrate the nature and relevance of the marketing function in the textile industry and to point out the problems incurred when we come to export marketing. I then went on to analyse the different forms of the marketing function found in different types of textile firms in Malta. Throughout the major part of this dissertation the analysis has been limited up to 1973. The reason was the lack of availability of more recent statistics at the time of writing. Although 1974 statistics have been published too recently, they showed changes in the patterns of our textile exports which, because of their importance, could hardly be omitted. This therefore, became the scope of the last chapter.