According to the Vice Chairman of VITAS Truong Van Cam, under the pressure of the suspended Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Vietnam textile & garment industry is facing numerous challenges at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. However, since the Quarter II of 2017, the Vietnam textile & garment industry has gradually stabilized and overcome challenges, taking the export value until the end of 2017 to be around 31 billion USD, up 10.23% compared to the same period of 2016. “It is expected that the trade value of textile & garment industry in the remaining two months of 2017 to reach 5.27 billion USD, taking the trade value for the whole year to 31 billion USD, up 10.23% compared to 2016” – Cam said.
Meanwhile, the export value of apparel reached 25.91 billion USD, up 8.7% compared to 2016, in which textile export value was 1.07 billion USD, experiencing a slight decrease of 0.65%.
In order to achieved these positive results, in 2017, the textile & garment industry has diversified export markets, in addition to the maintaining of major export markets such as the US, EU, Japan, Korea with high growth rate, some new markets have witnessed breakthroughs such as China, Russia or Cambodia. At the same time, the industry also introduced new products for export besides traditional textile & garment products.
However, some challenges the textile & garment industry are facing, as well as the role of VITAS in developing trade promotion programs, training human resources, sharing experiences in improving productivity, applying smart production models in the direction of Industrial revolution 4.0 for sustain able development.
In particular, VITAS has recommended the government in adjusting the basic wage, insurance, administrative procedures, and periodic investigation to reduce difficulties for enterprises in textile & garment industry.
One of the issue of the Vietnam textile & garment industry is that textile imported for later exporting is not subject to taxation, however, textile produced in Vietnam is under taxation. This is seen as unfair treatment, which has not created favorable conditions for local enterprises. As such, VITAS has requested the Ministry of Industry & Trade and the Ministry of Finance to reduce tax to 0% for enterprises using the local produced textile. To iron out the snags and increase added values of export garment products, the government and other relevant ministries and departments have gradually removed hurdles and issued policies to develop the support industry, contributing to the development of the supply chain in the garment sector.
Experts also proposed measures such as fully exploiting the domestic market of more than 90 million people, and maintaining and developing key markets such as the US, EU, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, as well as other markets like ASEAN, Eurasian Economic Union, India, and Latin America. For the export value target in 2018, the Vietnam textile & garment industry set the target of export value from 33.5 – 34 billion USD.
