Ms. Do Pham Ngoc Tu, Vice Chairwoman & Secretary General of VCOSA, delivers her report of Vietnam Textile & Apparel Industry & Outlook for 2040.
The report consists of three main parts.
In the first part, Ms. DO introduces the current situation of Vietnam's textile and apparel market. With charts and a series of data, she shows in detail the changes in Vietnam's textile and apparel production, export structure and turnover. 2021 Vietnam's textile and apparel exports grew by 15%, achieving an export value of USD 40 billion, and Vietnam's textile industry employs 3 million workers. Based on the growing domestic and international consumer demand for textiles, the shift in the global textile and apparel production value chain, breakthrough opportunities from bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, Vietnam has become the second largest apparel exporter in the world after China. Also benefiting from the trade friction between the US and China, a portion of orders have shifted to Vietnam, with textile and apparel exports of $22.9 billion in the first half of 2022, up 17.6% year-on-year, and annual exports expected to reach 41-43 billion USD. Vietnam has transformed from a yarn importer to a yarn exporter in recent years, with 2.8 billion USD yarn export value in H1 2022, including 1.4 billion USD fabrics, 1.2 billion USD accessories and 450 million USD technical textiles.
In the second part, Ms. DO describes the government development plan for Vietnam's textile and garment industry in 2040. With the advantages of labor cost, preferential corporate income tax, preferential personal income tax, and economic zones, Vietnam is an ideal choice as a source of international manufacturing; Vietnam hopes to take advantage of the existing free trade agreements to diversify export items, enhance product and brand competitiveness, and expand export markets to achieve the overall goal of development up to 2020-2025-2035, Vietnam's textile and garment industry will gradually become the world's largest supplier of sustainable textile and apparel products, and the industry will become more closed-loop, efficient and sustainable. In order to achieve the goal, eight strategic measures have been implemented, as well as a sustainable development plan for Vietnam's textile and garment industry, with the goal of "going green" by 2023: reducing energy consumption by 15% and water consumption by 20%, achieving a green and sustainable textile and garment industry by 2030, as well as creating 30 international brands and reshape the global buyer supply chain to meet its strict sustainability goals.
In the third part, Ms. DO focuses on the challenges and opportunities in the post-epidemic era. Due to the epidemic, demand from many of Vietnam's major textile import partners has dropped significantly, Vietnam's textile and apparel exports were down for the first time in 25 years, orders have slowed down, resulting in lower profits. But Vietnam has signed several new free trade agreements in 2020, which would provide more opportunities for textile exports in the future. Finally, she introduces some of the challenges facing Vietnam's textile industry at the moment, such as rising raw material prices, declining orders, hyperinflation in the Europe and the US, labor shortage and rising costs, and the weakening of the Euro that undermines the profit margins of European and American buyers.
In the question and answer session that followed, Ms. DO responds to the current situation of Vietnamese yarn mills' operation and the ways of Vietnamese textile enterprises to cope with the environment of US sanctions on Xinjiang cotton.
