Exports of textiles and apparel only reaches $US 28 billion

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The export of textiles and apparel of the whole country only increased 5% compared to 2015. Photo: Nguyen Hue

With only few days left to the end of 2016, the export target is now $US 29 billion – the adjusted target compared to the beginning of 2016 which was $US 31 billion, which is now not feasible.

On 19 December, 2016, Mr. Hoang Ve Dung, Deputy Director General of the Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group said that, the export of textiles and apparel in 2016 was estimated at $ US 28.023 billion, only increased by 5% compared to 2015.

Besides, the key export markets such as US, EU, Japan and Korea had low growth.

This was the lowest growth rate of the textiles and apparel industry during the past ten years. Such a low growth was due to 2016 being a difficult year for textiles and apparel businesses.

Mr. Dung further stated that because of the difficult economy, the world’s purchasers shortened the goods purchasing plan from long-term to short-term. If previously, the purchasers made a 5-6 month plan, now they reduced to a 2-3 month plan. The time to order the goods was short which required businesses to offer a competitive price to be the winners”. Mr. Dung said.

From the middle of 2016, the export growth of textiles and apparel was fairly slow, just around 5-6%, which was caused by decrease in the demand of import markets because of the difficult economy. Thus, the textiles and apparel businesses including large businesses also fell with a serious lack of purchase orders. Together with this was the decrease of exports compared to 2015.

However, according to Mr. Dung, the textiles and apparel industry also made tremendous strides at integration, took advantage of free trade agreements and proactively picked opportunities of integration. Many businesses oriented their production under the modes of ODM and OBM involving in the international supply chain.

Besides constantly expanding the export market, the textiles and apparel industry was also increasingly interested in and gradually controlling the domestic market. The domestic revenues were estimated at $US 4-5 billion in 2016.

In 2017, the textiles and apparel industry will continue to face many difficulties. "we cannot predict how the textiles and apparel industry will be, that will be decided by the market. Therefore, the development of the plan should be flexible according to the market performance and react quickly to take opportunities", Dung acknowledged.

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In the difficult context, the key measures set out by the textiles and apparel industry for 2017 are promoting trade, seeking markets, limiting processing and selling products through agents, that means buying from manufacturers and selling to consumers.