Vietnam’s textile and garment industry is unable to benefit from the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement due to its reliance on imported fabrics.

Vietnam’s “Investment News” reported on October 23 that the latest report submitted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam to Congress showed that the annual export volume of the textile and garment industry is nearly 40 billion US dollars, requiring 10 billion US dollars of fabrics. meters, but the domestic fabric production capacity is only 2.3 billion meters, and the self-sufficiency rate is about 25%. Most of the fabrics are imported from China, Taiwan, and South Korea. The domestic garment processing industry only stays in the sewing link of the industrial chain, with low added value and difficult to It meets the origin standards stipulated in the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement, so it cannot fully enjoy the benefits brought by the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement. Since South Korea has signed a free trade agreement with the EU, if clothing companies want to benefit from the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement, they can only import fabrics from South Korea. However, currently only 15.2% of fabrics are imported from South Korea, 54.9% are imported from China, and 12.1% are imported from Taiwan, China. The main reason affecting domestic fabric production capacity is that cotton, yarn, dyeing and finishing and other supporting industries cannot keep up with the demand for garment processing. In particular, the environmental protection department’s restrictions on the development of the dyeing and finishing industry have severely restricted fabric production. At the same time, developing fabric production from the source requires huge investment. To solve the 8 billion meter fabric production gap, an investment of US$30 billion is required, which is a bottleneck restricting fabric production. </p