Garment, textile sector earns $4.8b in H1

The garment and textile industry earned US$4.8 billion in the first six months of this year, said chairman of the Viet Nam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas) Le Quoc An.

The sector’s revenue is 17.2 per cent higher than the same period last year.

An said that the industry earned an export turnover of $800 million this June alone.

The apparel industry is the country’s biggest export earner. Its export turnover in the first half of the year was $1.7 billion more than the revenue generated by the sale of crude oil, which is the country’s second largest export commodity.

During the first two quarters of this year, Viet Nam’s trade with the US increased by 15 per cent when compared with the same period last year, while the country’s trade with Japan increased by more than 10 per cent. Garment exports to European markets also recorded a slight increase.

Viet Nam’s apparel products account for roughly 2.7 per cent of the world’s total market share. In the US and Japan, Vietnamese export products are second only to China, with market shares of 7.4 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively, according to Vitas.

The garmet sector has already earned 47 per cent of its annual target of $10.5 billion, which An said would likely be met. He expected that the industry would continue to maintain its growth for the rest of the year because many domestic apparel exporters have contracts for orders that will be fufilled before the end of the year. Prices have also increased by approximately 10 per cent in the last year.

The apparel industry is currently working to reduce its production costs and install advanced technology in order to increase productivity and competitiveness.

With respect to sales in the domestic market, An said that garment and textile producers in the first half of the year had achieved a growth rate of 15-18 per cent.

However, An admitted that the industry must quickly work to remedy the sector’s labour shortage at industrial parks and export processing zones.

To deal with the shortage, An said, the association would continue to encourage its members to relocate their factories to provinces and rural areas where they could employ more workers.

The industry is also planning to increase its use of local products in order to gradually reduce its dependence on imports. According to the General Statistics Office, the country during the first five months of the year spent $3.7 billion on imported material for the garment and footwear sectors.

The General Director of the Viet Nam Textile and Garment Corporation (Vinatex), Vu Duc Giang, said that the corporation had so far invested nearly VND15.3 billion ($805,000) in the production of fibre, cotton, and dye in order to increase the industry’s localisation rate to 50 per cent and to 70 per cent by 2011 and 2017, respectively.

The apparel industry last year was among the country’s major export earners despite suffering from the impacts of the global economic slowdown. The sector earned $9 billion, which was a decrease of 1.3 per cent from the previous year. —VNS

Tags: Vietnam garment exports, Vietnam Garment industry, Vietnam textile industry