Textile Industry Ready for New Master Plan

It is obvious to recognise the imbalanced allocation of the textile industry among provinces and regions. In the North, the textile enterprises account for 30 percent but there are up to12 percent concentrating in the Hanoi. 62 percent are located in the South, of which an overwhelming 50.9 percent of businesses operate in Ho Chi Minh City. Thus, there are only 8 percent of the textile businesses in the Central coast.

The high density of the textile businesses at large urban areas will lead to fierce competition between the textile industry and other industries. Besides, the businesses in the textile industry are now competing with each other for contracts, labour and wages. Over the years, the textile businesses often face with the labour shortage because the textiles industry is growing too quickly but lacking a strategy. Many textile businesses born spontaneously causes higher demands for labour while the number of trained workers from local areas cannot meet the business needs.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade pointed out that some shortcomings arise due to the imbalanced planning in textile supporting industry, particularly most fabrics and garment accessories now depend on imports. Most processing models in value chain creates low added value. Meanwhile, the collection, analysis, and provision of specialized information of domestic and international markets are not timely enough; and the design and product development are limited.

At the workshop of "Comments on the draft of the Vietnamese textile industry development by 2020 with the vision until 2030", organised by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Deputy Minister Ho Thi Kim Thoa said that Vietnamese textile industry may soon require a new plan. "However, along with acquiring and inheriting the old plan, the new plan needs suitable adjustments to better fit with reality. Notably, the majority of textile workers shifted from rural areas to urban areas while their income is too low to meet their daily needs. Thus, the new plan should identify a reversed labour shift from urban to rural areas."

The draft of the Vietnamese textile industry development by 2020 with the vision until 2030 is proposed at the time the master plan of the Vietnamese textile industry by 2015 with the vision until 2020 has been implemented for 5 years. In near future, the world’s textile industry tends to move quickly to the countries with high advantages of human resources and low processing costs.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the objective of the new plan is to make textile industry become a key exporting industry in order to meet domestic consumers’ high demands, create jobs and improve competitiveness and integration firmly. In particular, by 2020, the textile industry is striving to build well-known brands for integration into the world market.

According to the draft of the National Assembly, the textile industry will have achieved total export value of US$31 to 32 billion by 2020 and rise to US$60 to 65 billion by 2030, corresponding to 60 percent and 80 percent of localisation. The key products will be raw cotton, synthetic fiber, fibers, woven fabrics, knitted fabrics, technical products and garments.