The “breakthrough” growth year of Vietnam’s textile and garment industry

Called “breakthrough” because since 2011 until now, 2018 is the year with the highest growth rate with nearly 17%, export turnover increased by more than 5 billion USD compared to 2017.

According to Mr. Le Tien Truong, General Director of Vietnam Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex), 2018 could be called a “breakthrough” growth year of Vietnam’s textile and garment industry because of the “golden years” like 2007-2008. The growth rate of this industry reached 34%, but the actual value of absolute value is only over 2 billion USD, while in recent years, the increase of 10% is an average of only 2.5-3 billion USD. turnover. Therefore, USD 5 billion of export growth in 2018 is considered a special number, equal to 100% of 2007 export turnover.

Where does growth come from?

“In terms of overall view, the labor image of textile and garment is different, making the overall competitiveness just keep pace with the new world standards of production, environment, and labor relations.” Mr. Truong shared.

More evidence of this, Mr. Truong for example, in the past, May Hung Yen paid relatively high salaries to workers. However, in return, workers have to work overtime. Up to this point, although the average salary of the workers here is 9,000,000 VND / month, but does not increase the working day, there are more holidays and allowances. That made the image of textiles be greatly improved.

Investing in depth

For the Group, Vinatex’s revenue increased by 11% this year (while the whole industry increased by 16%), mainly due to internal growth, productivity, quality and intensive investment, automatic equipment investment. chemical, etc. while the whole industry has the contribution of new projects.

Instead of investing in a new factory, the member units of the group, such as May 10 invest in automatic cutting, which helps workers to be strenuous, achieve higher accuracy and extremely difficult stages. use robots, replace 8 workers at the same stage. Even the dangerous techniques of men’s vests have been replaced by automated machines.

“In 2018 the group focuses on reinvesting but not in width but one step up in technology quality, so looking at the number of employees is only 98% of the previous year, this is an innovation”, Mr. Truong shared.

Productivity and Quality Office