Chinanews, Beijing, Jan. 9 – Although in Kazakhstan, the temperature has now fallen to minus ten degrees centigrade, many shoemakers from Zhejiang Province make frequent visits to the Central Asian country. Affected by EU's anti-dumping measures, Chinese shoemakers have to look for new markets to promote their sales, World News Journal reported.
Mr. Shan, a general manager of a shoe exporting company in Wenzhou, told the reporter that since EU had imposed a 16.5% anti-dumping tax on Chinese leather shoes, many Chinese shoemakers, which previously made shoes for the EU market, had had to stop or even close their business. The export volume of his company had also decreased drastically.
He said that most of the Chinese shoemakers couldn't survive the two-year anti-dumping tax period. When learning that the market was prosperous in the Central Asian region, they came in hopes of making a pile there.
“After EU imposed the anti-dumping tax, we could not receive large orders at the Guangzhou Trade Fair because we couldn’t afford to pay the 16.5% anti-dumping tax. On the other hand, it is very difficult for us to negotiate with importers to jointly bear the tax burden. After inspecting the situation in Central Asian countries, I suddenly realized that I might have made a mistake by totally relying on the European market. In fact, the market in Central Asia has developed very rapidly and most important of all, there are 60 million people living in the region and most of these countries rely heavily on the import of Chinese shoes,” said Xu, a manager in Wenzhou.
At present, 98% of shoes in Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyz, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are imported from other countries. Shoes made in China account for 80% of the total import quotas in these countries, due to their cheap price and improved quality.
Although Russia’s shoemaking industry has made rapid progress in recent years, the making techniques and the styles of their shoes still lag behind. In Kazakhstan, where economy develops the fastest among all Central Asian countries, there are only a few shoemaking companies there and most of them only produce labor protection shoes. The equipment used in the companies are rather out-of-date. Most of shoes worn by people in these countries are imported from China.
