"China remains the largest supplier of toys in the European Union (EU) market with sharp increase of toy exports in sight in the near future," said Aage Hillesborg Thursday, an official in charge of toy quality ection in the European Association of Toy Industry.

The official cited the 2003 figure as saying that China's toy exports accounted for 75.5 percent of the 9.5 billion US dollars worth of toy imports by the EU nations.

The Chinese products are competitive in term of both quality and price, which will further stimulate the country's toy exports to the EU nations, he said.

China has become the world's largest toy producer ever since 1990s. Presently, the country has more than 8,000 toy production enterprises with more than 3 million workers engaging in the industry.

The country gains about 50 billion yuan (some 6.02 billion US dollars) in annual output values from the toy industry, and turns out 70 percent of the world's toy products, which are marketable in the EU countries, the United States and Japan.

According to a probe by the European Association of Toy Industry, the annual increase of toy retail sales in the EU marketstands at around 5 percent, while toy production by the EU countries has been showing declines in recent years, leaving huge opportunities for the Chinese toy manufacturers, said Aage Hillesborg.

The massive-scale production mode taken by the highly-efficientChinese toy-making firms makes it possible for them to replace theEU toy producers in the European markets which consist mainly of the small and medium-sized companies, the official added.

Source: Xinhua