Asia has become an emerging market for both producers and buyers of housewares due to the region's fast economic development, said organizers of the Hong Kong Houseware Fair which opened on Friday.

Higher number of participators to this year's exhibition has reflected the worldwide healthy development of the housewares sector, Jeffrey Lam, chairman of the Fair Organizing Committee, told a press conference on Friday.

This year, the Hong Kong event has seen a 6-percent growth in number of exhibitors to 2,302 houseware product sellers from 36 economies, the highest number of exhibitors in the event's 21 years' history.

Besides the traditional high number of exhibitors from China's mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, this year's event has seen rising attendance of new sellers from Asia, said Lam.

Taking Turkey as an example, Lam said that exhibitors from the country first took part in the fair in last year, but this year the number of Turkish exhibitors is 10 percent more.

Vietnam is another country that has a rocketing number of exhibitors to showcase their household goods at the four-day Hong Kong Houseware Fair, the largest exhibition of its kind in Asia and the third largest in the world in term of the scale.

"There were only seven exhibitors from Vietnam last year, but this year we have more than 40 of them," said Lam.

The exhibitors' active participation of the event reflected a worldwide healthy development of this sector, said Lam, citing Hong Kong's exports of houseware products as proof.

"Even after a surge of 12 percent in exports of household goods in 2004, our industry was able to maintain the momentum in 2005," said Lam.

In 2005, Hong Kong exported a total of 21.97 billion U.S. dollars worth of houseware products to the world, with the United States, China's mainland, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom as the top market.

On the other hand, an emerging market for houseware products consumption has also appeared in Asia due to the region's sound economic development, said Benjamin Chau, assistant executive director of Hong Kong Trade Development Council.

Last year, Hong Kong's household goods exports to Thailand has grown by 14 percent over the previous year, while the market in Japan recovered with an increase of 8 percent, said Lam.

Asia's increasing consumption of housewares would provide producers with a lot of opportunity and help them shun the fierce competition on European market, Chau told Xinhua.

He noted that many local houseware producers tended to ignore orders from the new Asian market, for many of which purchasing too little compared to the European buyers.

It could be a bad practice, warned Chau. With Asia's economy taking off, it's worthwhile for the producers to have an early appearance to tap the market potential in the long run, he said.

Source: Xinhua