Many of East European countries, and erstwhile members of former Soviet Republic, had been integrated into EU in the last decade and have been climbing up the development ladder. Many of these countries had low costs of production due to reasonable wage structures . But over the years , as they integrated into EU , their economies no longer remained as competitive as before . Apparel production, which was there is some of these countries in some numbers could not be carried forward in the same way and they lost the productions to Asian countries. However, in spite of these losses , some of these countries still have some apparel productions and we will check out about jeans production in a few of these countries in 2011 and 2012.
We shall cover these countries in this report (also given their years of integration into EU).
| Country | Year Of Integration in EU |
| Lithuania | 2004 |
| Hungary | 2004 |
| Romania | 2007 |
| Bulgaria | 2007 |
| Poland | 2004 |
We will look at the production of jeans in these countries in the year 2012. These numbers will be given for men’s and women’s jeans separately. Also we will have a look at the production values for men’s and women’s jeans and see how they compare with the average value of import of jeans into EU.
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Jeans production in five east EU countries in 2012
| Country |
Men’s Jeans |
Women’s Jeans |
Total |
|
Lituania |
7,762 |
45,657 |
53,419 |
|
Hungary |
4,735 |
46,524 |
51,259 |
|
Romania |
2,427,471 |
3,720,639 |
6,14,8110 |
|
Bulgaria |
9,06,766 |
1,27,699 |
1,034,465 |
|
Poland |
44,932 |
3,79,459 |
4,24,391 |
| Total |
3,391,666 |
4,319,978 |
7,711,644 |
From the above table , we can see that the highest production of jeans remains in Romania . It is almost 80% of the total jeans produced in these above mentioned five countries. However, Romania produced about 14 million jeans in 2007 , hence we have come down to less than half in just 5 years. Other countries like Lithuania , Hungary, Poland etc have hardly any jeans production left. Bulgaria , at about 1 million jeans, is the next highest , but again not something that they can be really proud of . However, it would be important to mention here that in these countries sometimes entire production quantities may not be fully reflected due to some productions escaping govt. records – as the records maintained in these countries are not as perfect as those of developed countries like Germany, France etc. Hence these figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Also to be noted is that the production of women’s jeans is higher than that of men’s jeans. Women’s jeans are about 60% of the total jeans production in these countries – again indicating production for fast fashion items for women. We will see another reason too.
We will also see how these countries value the production of these jeans in their countries. We will see the different valuations for men’s and women’s jeans.
Production value of Men’s Jeans Produced
| Country |
Men’s Jeans |
Prod. Value per unit of Jeans ( In Euros) |
|
Lituania |
7,762 |
10.9 |
|
Hungary |
4,735 |
16.9 |
|
Romania |
2,427,471 |
14.6 |
|
Bulgaria |
9,06,766 |
14.3 |
|
Poland |
44,932 |
9.3 |
|
Total |
3,391,666 |
14.4 |
Production value of Women’s Jeans Produced
| Country |
Women’s Jeans |
Prod. Value per unit of Jeans ( In Euros) |
|
Lituania |
45,657 |
N.A |
|
Hungary |
46,524 |
12.8 |
|
Romania |
3,720,639 |
10.3 |
|
Bulgaria |
1,27,699 |
7.9 |
|
Poland |
3,79,459 |
6.3 |
|
Total |
4,319.978 |
9.9 |
As we can see from the figures above, it is more costly to produce a men’s jeans in these countries with average production values coming to about Euro 14.4 and those for women’s jeans nearing about 10 Euros. This is also probably a reason for higher production of women’s jeans in these countries when compared to men’s. We must , however, remember that these are production valuations and not necessarily the prices at which the retailer might be able to get the jeans to retail.
In this context, it would be interesting to see what are the average prices of jeans being imported into EU from around the world. Are those prices significantly different from figures seen above ? We can have a look at the following figures of import of jeans into EU with their average prices( sans duties) .
If we make a comparison with the of jeans production in these countries in 2011 vs 2012 , we will find that the falling trend of production continues.
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