Breaking through the obstacles of the epidemic, the export growth rate of Vietnam’s textile and apparel industry is expected to exceed 11 percent! Despite the severe impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, Vietnamese textile and apparel companies have overcome many difficulties and maintained a good growth momentum in 2021. The export value is estimated at $39 bn, an increase of 11.2 percent year-on-year. Compared with before the outbreak, this figure is 0.3 percent higher than the export value in 2019.
The above information was provided by Truong Van Cam, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS) at the press conference of the 2021 Textile and Apparel Association Summary Conference recently.
Zhang Wenjin said, “2021 is an extremely difficult year for the Vietnamese textile and garment industry. Under the premise of a negative growth of 9.8 percent in 2020, the textile and garment industry will enter 2021 with many concerns.” In the first quarter of 2021, Vietnamese textile and apparel companies are very happy because they have received orders from the beginning of the year until the end of the third quarter or even the end of the year. By the second quarter of 2021, the COVID-19 epidemic has broken out in Northern Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, and Southern provinces and cities, causing the production of textile and garment enterprises to be almost frozen.
According to Zhang, “From July 2021 to September 2021, Vietnamese textile exports continued to decline and orders could not be delivered to partners. This situation could not end until October, when the Vietnamese Government issued No. 128/NQ-CP When the resolution was made on the provisional provision of safe and flexible adaptation to effectively control the COVID-19 epidemic, the production of the enterprise began to resume, so that the order could be “delivered”.
According to the representative of VITAS, the production of textile and garment enterprises will resume at the end of 2021, which will help the textile and garment industry to reach $39 bn in exports in 2021, which is equivalent to 2019. Among them, the export value of apparel products reached $28.9 bn, an increase of 4 percent year-on-year; the export value of fibre and yarn is estimated to be $5.5 bn, an increase of more than 49 percent, mainly exported to markets such as China.
The United States is still the largest export market for Vietnam’s textile and apparel industry, with exports of $15.9 bn, an increase of 12 percent over 2020; exports to the EU market reached $3.7 bn, an increase of 14 percent; exports to the Korean market reached $3.6 bn; exports to the Chinese market amounted to $4.4 bn, mainly yarn products.
VITAS stated that the association has formulated three scenarios for the 2022 target: In the most positive scenario, if the epidemic is basically controlled by the first quarter of 2022, it will strive to achieve the goal of exporting $42.5-43.5 bn. In the second scenario, if the epidemic is controlled by the middle of the year, the export target is $40-41 bn. In the third scenario, if the epidemic has not been controlled until the end of 2022, the target for exports is $38-39 bn.
