Business News

Armed with experience from coping with the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic, many textile and footwear enterprises are quietly confident they can alter their plans as required and find new markets to cope with the second.

With the second wave of Covid-19, Vietnam's textile and footwear industries, still reeling from the impact of the first, are likely to see things worsen.

“To take those advantages, the local textile and apparel enterprises must strengthen links among them to focus all sources on manufacturing materials meeting requirements on product origin in FTAs like the EU-Việt Nam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), especially fabric for producing export garment products," he told Việt Nam News.

Statistics showed Việt Nam's textile and garment exports in April decreased by 20 per cent compared to March, Trương Văn Cẩm, vice chairman of the Việt Nam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas), said at an online seminar held by the association on Monday.

Right from the middle of the first quarter of 2020, a lot of major importers postponed and canceled orders, causing most domestic exporters to moderate production or even temporarily halt production.

Le Tien Truong, CEO of Hanoi-based Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex), said that the figure was calculated based on the assumption that the pandemic is contained in May and the global economy starts recovering in June.

According to Phạm Xuân Hồng, Chairman of the HCM City Association of Garment Textile Embroidery and Knitting, customers said they needed to stop receiving goods due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the US and EU, prompting governments to declare states of emergency and tighten border controls.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s impacts on production mindset and methods are tangible. An example is Duc Quan Investment and Development JSC in the northern province of Thai Binh, which has doubled its yarn output to 17,000 tonnes per year through the application of Big Data in production and management.