EU and US temporarily suspend textile and garment imports from Vietnam

The US, the largest garment export market of Vietnam have announced to halt importing garments from Vietnam in the next 3 weeks. Earlier, importers from the EU also announced to stop importing textiles within one month due to the coronavirus crisis.

The newspaper cited Pham Van Viet, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Viet Thang Company, as saying that his enterprise had received the notice for suspending purchasing from to EU market from March 13 and March 18 for US market .

In Europe, the pandemic is spreading so quickly, affecting several industries including trade and services were paralyzed. The biggest challenge of local garment producers is they had imported a lot of raw materials, said Pham Xuan Hong, President of Ho Chi Minh City Embroidery Association.

US market accounts for 30-35% of the Viet Thang Company’s total exports while the EU market accounts for 20%. Japan and South Korea account for 40%.

Korean buyers have not made an official announcement to suspend importing, but they have stopped importing for three weeks.

Similarly, Cecile Pham, General Director of Dacotex Group, said many enterprises will continue to face the same difficulties.

The United States and the EU are two major and important textile export markets of Vietnam. Data from the General Department of Customs shows that in 2019, textile exports to the US reached $14.85 billion, up 8.4% compared to 2018 and accounted for 45.2% of the country's textile and garment exports.

In the first 2 months of this year, despite coronavirus pandemic, textile and garment was still among main export commodities reaching the billion US dollar export value, reaching nearly $4.7 billion, up 2.2% from a year ago.  

For the EU market, in 2019, the bloc imported $4.3 billion of textiles and garments from Vietnam, an increase of 4% over the previous year. The EU market is expected to increase sharply after the EVFTA Agreement comes into effect.

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Source: Thanh Nien