Vietnam firms invest in textile, dyeing

To avail themselves of business opportunities from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, many textile and garment firms have over the past two years started building textile and dyeing complexes. For instance, 10 enterprises have invested hundreds of millions of US dollars in those complexes in southern Binh Duong Province.

However, US President-elect Donald Trump said his country would leave the TPP but investment to those industrial complexes would still continue for long-term development strategies.

Esquel Garment Manufacturing Vietnam Co Ltd has operated in Vietnam for 10 years and mainly imported material from China. In 2015, the company invested in a textile and dyeing factory in Binh Duong partly for availing business opportunities from the TPP. The factory has completed construction of the building in the first stage and it will begin operations in a year.

With information emerging that the US could leave the TPP, the company would consider carefully its investment plans for the factory in the second and third stages.

However, Nguyen Van Luong, deputy general director of Esquel Garment Manufacturing Vietnam, said the decision on investment was under the company’s long-term development strategy in Vietnam but not only for TPP.

Textile and garment enterprises said that TPP has prompted them to increase investment in textile and dyeing for production of garment products. In the long-term, development of textile and dyeing would help Vietnam complete its production process for garment products and avoid dependence on material imports as being done at present, VTV reported.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Xuan Duong, chairman of Hung Yen Garment Company said TPP would present more opportunities to local textile garment firms to export to the US, but if there was no TPP, exports to the US would have no effect.

During his election campaign, President-elect Donald Trump had said that if he won the elections the US would impose import tariff of 45% on Chinese products. So, Duong said, garment producers who have investments in China could consider moving their business to other countries, including Vietnam, to avoid high import tariff for products imported from China, the Dien Dan Doanh Nghiep newspaper reported.

Dương said that Vietnam’s textile and garment exports next year would face many difficulties as expectations. Hung Yen Garment Company has signed contracts to produce garment for exports until March and April 2017.

He expected the company to receive more export orders after Tet (the Lunar New Year) festival to produce stable exports until October 2017.

According to the General Statistics Office, Vietnam gained a year-on-year increase of 4.5% in export value to US$21.5 billion for the first 11 months of this year.

This year, the nation expected to gain a total export value of textile and garment at around $29 billion