Hanoi, July 4 (VNA) – Vietnam’s garment and textiles export in the first halfof the year grew 11.3 percent year-on-year to 14.58 billion USD. However, expertssaid the growth has not been sustainable yet.

Le Tien Truong, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam Garment and TextileGroup (Vinatex), said the results proved a praiseworthy effort made by the garmentsector in the context of the unstable global economy.

Demand for textile products from key importers like the US, the EU and Japantapered off in the first six months of the year. However, Vietnam’s garmentexports to those markets experienced robust achievements, Truong said.

He said that the country earned 6billion USD from exports to the US, surging nearly 9 percent, 2.3 billion USDfrom shipments to the EU, up 8 percent and 1.5 billion USD from Japan, up 12percent.

Vietnam outstripped its competitors in garment export growth in the period.According to the Trade Map, China experienced a decline of more than 5 percentyear-on-year, while Bangladesh saw a drop of 3.5 percent and Indonesia, 5percent.

However, the trade protectionism policy of the US President Donald Trumpadministration and interest rate adjustment from the US Federal Reserve willthreaten sustainable export growth. There is a high possibility that Vietnam’scompetitors will further devaluate domestic currencies to support exports asthey did in 2016, Truong said.

As the most tremendous hurdle for Vietnamese garments is foreign competitors,especially China with large scale production and low costs, Vietnameseenterprises need to join the global supply chain with fastidious requirementsof quality, prices and time of good delivery.

Poor orientations, which fail to meet long-term development of localenterprises, are a great inner difficulty for the garment and textiles industry.In addition, unsound competition between domestic and FDI businesses has beenon the cards.

The shortage of high-quality human resources, limitations in productdevelopment, capital access, marketing and foreign languages and high inputcosts also challenge the sector.

The garment sector recommended relevant authorities to support trainingprogrammes in original design manufacturer (ODM) business and information andtechnology while outlining rational policies on job creation, minimum wages andexchange rate.

Creating favourable conditions for enterprises to get access to soft loans andpreventing smuggled goods are significant activities to support domestic garmentand textiles businesses.-VNA