China will levy an export tax on textile products in 2005, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Friday.

The tax will be collected according to the volume of exports and the rate will be 0.2 yuan (US$0.024) or 0.3 yuan (US$0.036) per item or 0.5 yuan (US$0.061) per kilogram, said Lu Jianhua, director of the MOC foreign trade sector.

According to Lu, China will levy the tax on 31 kinds of textile products in six categories in all trading forms and to all overseas market in 2005, when all the World Trade Organization members will remove quota on textile products.

Experts said that such measure will help improve the structure of Chinese textile exports and achieve the common development with other trading partners.

China is the world's major exporter of textile products with its export value reaching 77.5 billion US dollars from January to October this year. The United States, European Union and Japan are its top three importers.

(Xinhua News Agency December 31, 2004)