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Vietnam’s shoes running into trouble in Brazil?
Since 2006, Vietnam’s footwear industry has been facing a lot of anti-dumping lawsuits, from the lawsuit in Europe, to the threatened lawsuit raised in Mexico.
Most recently, Argentina has asked the Vietnam Leather and Footwear Association (Lefaso) to provide information about the production costs of the product items exported to the country. Brazil has also officially raised a lawsuit against Vietnam’s shoes.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade has confirmed that Brazilian shoes association, Abicalcaldo, has officially filed an anti-dumping lawsuit against Vietnam’s shoes to the Brazilian Department of Commercial Defense, under the Ministry of Industry and Trade Development. On December 15, the Brazilian Department of Commercial Defense released a document, stating that it has officially handled the case.
Lefaso’s Secretary General, Nguyen Thi Tong, said that Brazil is not a key export market for Vietnam, as Brazil is one of the countries with the highest shoe production in the world.
Born in 1824, the Brazilian shoe industry has been growing strong ever since. In 1968, the country began making footwear for export to the US. Currently, Brazil has over 9,000 shoemakers that put out 796 million pairs of shoes a year, including 180 million pairs for export. The country has 1,500 workshops that provide accessories for the shoe industry. The labor force in Brazil proves to be profuse with a population of 190 million people.
According to Vietnam’s Commercial Affair Division under Vietnam’s Embassy in Brazil, since 2005, Brazil has been ranked the third in the world in terms of shoe production, with 762 million pairs of shoes, just falling behind China and India.
In fact, the shoe exports to Brazil in the last few years have remained modest, with just several tens of million dollars in turnover. According to the General Department of Customs, Brazil imported nearly $40 million worth of footwear from Vietnam in the first 11 months of the year. The country last year imported 28.6 million pairs of shoes, including 26.7 million pairs from China and 2.3 million from Vietnam.
Tong said that with the great advantages of Brazil’s shoes industry, Vietnam does not intend to compete with Brazil.
Tong said that to date, the Brazilian side has not made contact with Lefaso, and therefore, the association does not have much information about the case.
However, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam and Lefaso have informed Vietnamese shoemakers and exporters of the lawsuit, asking them to be well-prepared for the lawsuit.
Tong went on to say that it will require a great deal of time from Abicalcaldo’s filing to the announcement of the anti-dumping investigation. In fact, though Abicalcaldo has filed the lawsuit, this does not mean that the lawsuit will certainly take place. In the past, Mexico once also intended to raise a lawsuit against Vietnam’s shoes. However, it then met many difficulties in gathering figures for the lawsuit, while Vietnamese companies took action to prevent the negative aspects, and the lawsuit did not occur.
Anyway, the information about the lawsuit in Brazil has badly affected the psychology of exporters and clients.
Vietnam expects to obtain the export turnover of $4.5 billion in 2008 and hopes to export $5.1 billion worth of products in 2009. Vietnam-made shoes are being exported to 48 markets in the world, while the US remains the biggest export market, importing nearly $943 million worth of products from Vietnam.
TBKTVN
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