HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Vietnamese wood and furniture firms need toimprove their designs, distribution and brands to enable Vietnam to become aglobal furniture hub, a conference heard in Ho Chi Minh City on December 7.

Huynh Van Hanh, deputy chairman of the Handicrafts and Wood IndustryAssociation of HCM City (Hawa), said Vietnam was among the world’s largestfurniture exporters, trailing only China, Germany, Italy, and Poland.

He quoted Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc as saying at a recent conference thatVietnam must become one of the world’s quality furniture production hubs andthe industry must pay more attention to environmental protection and use timberfrom legal sources.

“Our business community has said no to illegal timber and we strictly use legaltimber for our furniture production.

“To achieve the target, we must build brands for Vietnamese furniture so thatwhen people talk about Vietnam, they will talk about Vietnamese furniturebrands.

The industry uses a lot of technology and machinery and so human resourcetraining must be enhanced, requiring enterprises to collaborate withuniversities and colleges and vocational training centres, according to Hanh.

Besides, companies need to improve their design capacity, build their ownbrands and develop supporting industries for the sector.

Pham Phu Ngoc Trai, chairman of Global Integration Business Consultants, saidVietnamese wood processing firms had certain advantages but had not invested intrade.

According to Nguyen Quoc Khanh, Hawa chairman, wood and forestry productexports have been worth 9 billion USD so far this year and the full-year figureis expected to exceed 9.5 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 16 percent.

♉[Video: Wood exports expected to hit 8.85 billion USD this year]

The US-China trade tension offers opportunities for Vietnamese firms toincrease exports to the US since Vietnamese products enjoy zero tax there whileChinese products attract 10 percent and it could even become 25 percent if thetrade war escalates.

But over 93 percent of the 4,500 wood processing firms in Vietnam are small,preventing the sector from developing to potential.

“We have opportunities to improve efficiency in the sector’s value chain,” hesaid.
He called on businesses to invest more inadvanced equipment and technologies to improve their productivity andcompetitiveness.

"Next year the wood and furniture industry is likely to achieve abreakthrough," he said.

“In fact, we will become the world’s largest hub for design and production ofquality furniture products for the world market.

“We hope that in the near future we will become major suppliers for largeglobal furniture projects.”

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh said if both the EU-VietnamFree trade agreement and the Comprehensive Progressive Tran-Pacific PartnershipAgreement (CPTPP) come into force next year, they would have a great effect onVietnamese furniture exports.

The preferential tariffs would help Vietnam’s wooden industry, known for itsquality, to get more new export orders, he said.

Consumers in the EU and other major markets such as the US and Japan areincreasingly demanding the use of legal timber in making furniture, and so Vietnammust strictly comply with the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest LawEnforcement, Governance and Trade that Vietnam and the EU signed last October,according to Khanh.

Speaking about the US-China trade tension, he said some experts reckoned itwould be an opportunity to increase exports to the US and there would even be ashift in investment from China to Vietnam.

They could be right since in international trade a tax difference of 10 percentis large, he said.

“In general, there is an opportunity to boost exports but it is not as large aswe thought.”

Besides, the opportunity might entail risks since China could use theVietnamese market to evade US taxes, he said.

“I call on businesses not to indulge in such fraud, and the ministry, customsagencies, and relevant agencies must enhance measures to prevent it.”

Organised by Hawa, the seminar attracted more than 300 wood and furniturebusinesses. — VNS/VNA