Leather and footwear export turnover expected to hit USD22 billion
Monday, 25/03/2019 21:06 (GMT+7)
Leather, footwear and handbag export turnover is expected to reach USD22 billion in 2019, a growth of 11% from the previous year, Diep Thanh Kiet, Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam Leather, Footwear and Handbag Association, said in a recent conference.
Photo for illustration
He stressed that the Vietnam leather and footwear sector has many advantages to develop, especially competitive salary compared to other markets in the region.
Traditional markets still hold competitive advantages, such as removing preferential policies for footwear imported from China in the US, offering opportunities for Vietnam’s footwear to compete in India.
In addition, the approval of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement helped the sector to expand its market to America. If the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement is adopted this year, the sector is expected to grow over 15%, bringing export turnover to more than USD22 billion.
However, there are still negative impacts on the sector. Specifically, enterprises still depend on imported raw material; fluctuations in raw materials can have fierce impacts on the growth and small and medium-sized enterprises not capable of joining the global supply chain, just mainly processing.
Therefore, in order to increase internal strength, Vietnamese enterprises should innovate production technology to supply large orders, creating a foundation to join the global supply chain. At the same time, they should focus on investing in research to gradually raise added value for leather and footwear products./.
BTA
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