HCM City (VNA) – Vietnamesetextile and garment firms should pay more attention to technologies and theirvalue chains to sustain their growth, a conference on textile value chainsheard on April 12.
Economist Tran Du Lich said Vietnam is oneof the top five garment and textile exporters, and is likely to increase itsexports by 4 billion USD this year to 35 billion USD.
Le Quoc An, former president of the VietnamTextile and Apparel Association, said Vietnam has a young workforce with 65 percentof the population being younger than 50, and so workers find it easier to adaptto new technologies.
Vietnam also has free trade agreements(FTAs) with many countries, and is currently negotiating with more, whichincreases the competitiveness of its products overseas, he said.
However, its productivity is relatively lowcompared to countries such as Malaysia and China since it still mostly relieson the inefficient cut-make-trim model, and textile firms rely on theircustomers to provide the fabric, designs and specifications and they provideonly the labour and bring little added value, he said.
They should adopt advanced technologies andtechniques to move away from simple manual work and add more value such asintegrating technology 4.0 in their research, production and marketing, hesaid.
“Improving our value chain is one of thebest ways to keep our textile and garment industry growing, especially asmachines are very likely to replace human labour in the next 10 years.”
Businesses should also allocate resourcesto training workers to adopt these technologies, he said.
Besides, firms with similar profiles shouldcollaborate so that they could jointly negotiate for bigger orders, and firmsin each value chain should link up so that production, marketing and logisticscan be coordinated more easily, he said.
When choosing partners, businesses have topay attention to each other’s qualities and strategic goals, and need to trusteach other, he said.
Pham Xuan Hong, Chairman of the HCM CityAssociation of Garment, Textile, Embroidery and Knitting, said the Governmentshould support the development of the industry by continuing to sign FTAs andeasing procedures to enable foreign firms to invest in Vietnam and bring newertechnologies.-VNA
Economist Tran Du Lich said Vietnam is oneof the top five garment and textile exporters, and is likely to increase itsexports by 4 billion USD this year to 35 billion USD.
Le Quoc An, former president of the VietnamTextile and Apparel Association, said Vietnam has a young workforce with 65 percentof the population being younger than 50, and so workers find it easier to adaptto new technologies.
Vietnam also has free trade agreements(FTAs) with many countries, and is currently negotiating with more, whichincreases the competitiveness of its products overseas, he said.
However, its productivity is relatively lowcompared to countries such as Malaysia and China since it still mostly relieson the inefficient cut-make-trim model, and textile firms rely on theircustomers to provide the fabric, designs and specifications and they provideonly the labour and bring little added value, he said.
They should adopt advanced technologies andtechniques to move away from simple manual work and add more value such asintegrating technology 4.0 in their research, production and marketing, hesaid.
“Improving our value chain is one of thebest ways to keep our textile and garment industry growing, especially asmachines are very likely to replace human labour in the next 10 years.”
Businesses should also allocate resourcesto training workers to adopt these technologies, he said.
Besides, firms with similar profiles shouldcollaborate so that they could jointly negotiate for bigger orders, and firmsin each value chain should link up so that production, marketing and logisticscan be coordinated more easily, he said.
When choosing partners, businesses have topay attention to each other’s qualities and strategic goals, and need to trusteach other, he said.
Pham Xuan Hong, Chairman of the HCM CityAssociation of Garment, Textile, Embroidery and Knitting, said the Governmentshould support the development of the industry by continuing to sign FTAs andeasing procedures to enable foreign firms to invest in Vietnam and bring newertechnologies.-VNA
VNA