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Experts call for stitching up ASEAN textile-industry cooperation
Textile and garment businesses based in ASEAN member-countries should cooperate to overcome the global economic slump, experts have suggested.
ASEAN economies could create a bloc-wide supply chain for the industry using their advantages, they said at a meeting in Ho Chi Minh City Tuesday.
R.J. Gurley, director of the ASEAN Competitiveness Enhancement Project, said Thailand or Indonesia are strong in fabrics, yarns and other materials for the industry while Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have professional garment makers with skilled and cheap labor.
The regional supply chain would be further facilitated with ASEAN members committing to cutting intrabloc import tariffs to zero by 2015, said Gurley, whose US-backed project aims to double the value of lightweight fabric exports among the region’s members from $17 million in 2007 to $34 million in the next five years.
David Birnbaum, a garment-industry expert with the World Bank, United Nations and World Trade Organization, said the global recession was hurting consumer demand for clothes in the Europe and US, ASEAN’s major export markets.
The bloc’s textile and garment exports fell by 2 percent last year from 2007 and would decline further this year, the ASEAN Federation of Textile Industries said in a report in February, without providing more details.
Vietnam’s textile and garment manufacturers laid off around 10,000 out of a total of 2 million workers by February, official statistics show.
ASEAN experts said despite governments’ strong support for the industry, it would only recover when demand increases in Europe and the US.
But cooperation among the bloc members would help the industry recover sooner and lay the foundation for stronger development in future.
ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Minh Quang
thanhnien
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