Vietnam’s textile and garment industry expects to surpass its initial
2013 export target of 19 billion USD by an extra by 1 billion USD.
Pham Xuan Hong, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Garment
Association (Vitas), said the textile and garment industry, despite many
challenges in production and business, was one of the two industries
reaching more than 10 billion USD in export value for this year’s first
nine months.
Hong said the industry expected to
achieve an annual growth rate of 15 percent in export value for the year
thanks to the Government’s export promotion policies and the textile
and garment enterprises’ efforts.
As a result, it
will add 1 billion USD to its initial export value target to bring the
industry’s total export value to 20 billion USD for the whole year.
Nguyen An, general director of the Saigon Garment Production and
Trading Joint Stock Company, said the company found new partners at a
fashion fair held in the US in August and it expected to get new export
orders and expand production by year’s end.
In
addition, the localisation rate for export products has increased to
40-50 percent against the previous year’s 20-30 percent, Hong said.
This caused imports of material and sub-materials to fall, an
advantage for the textile and garment industry in export activities once
Vietnam joins the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, he said.
The industry has paid attention to investment in design, production
and new production technology to improve the quality and value of those
products.
However, Hong said local producers must
compete with rivals from other countries, such as Bangladesh, India and
Cambodia, in export pricing due to higher salaries for workers in
Vietnam over other countries.
Local producers have
also faced difficulties in sourcing and importing material and
sub-material for making textile and garment products due to competition
with other countries in the region.
The Ministry of
Industry and Trade’s statistics show that in the first nine months of
this year, the textile and garment industry earned an export value of 13
billion USD, up 18 percent from the same time last year.
The US, the EU, Japan and the Republic of Korea are the biggest
importers of Vietnamese textiles and garments, with exports to these
markets accounting for 49, 15, 12 and 9 percent of the industry’s export
revenue, respectively.-VNA