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Garment sector may miss revised export target
Slower-than-expected sales may mean Vietnam’s textile and clothing sector will miss its revised export target for this year, according to Le Quoc An, chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association.
The 2009 target was earlier this year lowered to US$9.3 billion to $9.5 billion from the earlier target of $10 billion to $10.5 billion.
The new target assumes exports will grow by 3 percent to 5 percent this year, said An, who is also chairman of the National Textile and Garment Group’s management board.
While Vietnam’s larger garment-making enterprises have been receiving an increasing number of orders thanks to their established brands, business network and large production capability, many smaller subcontracting businesses were still short of enough orders to make a profit, he said.
“Therefore we are trying to maintain this year’s export turnover at $9 billion to $9.1 billion, the same as last year,” he said.
In the first half of this year, textile and clothing exports fell 1.3 percent from the first half of 2008 to just over $4 billion.
Vietnam’s textile and garment industry, the nation’s second-biggest export earner after oil, was hit hard by the global economic downturn, with factories mothballed and workers retrenched late last year and early this year as orders dried up.
Although new orders began being placed by overseas customers since April, some firms have had to refuse the orders because of a labor shortage.
But An said the labor shortage problem was the result of the low wages offered by employers in the sector.
An said textile and garment firms would not need extra workers if they increased productivity. A 20 percent increase in productivity would also increase workers’ incomes from VND2 million ($112) to VND2.4 million ($135) a month, he said.
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