Vietnamese textile and garment exporters, who are bringing the second largest forex volume to the country, are now crying for help as they are encountering a number of hardships, state media reported.
According to the enterprises, the biggest blow is the devaluation of U.S. dollar against Vietnam dong. Currently, they suffer a loss of VND1,000 from every US$1 earned from exports, thus, they lose VND10 billion from every US$10 million obtained from exports while exporters receive mostly dollars from exports.
“If the exchange rate between Vietnam dong and U.S. dollar continues to further fall, for example, a decrease of VND2,000 for US$1, I do not know what will happen,” said an exporter.
In addition, rising input costs will force garment makers to narrow production and cut jobs, which will cause social problems.
One more concern is the strikes by workers asking for salary rise while prices of almost all the goods are soaring.
Representative from Hoa Binh Garment Company, who put the apparel sector in comparison with the stock market, said “textile and garment is also a key industry that is raking in a large volume of foreign currencies but it has not yet received the government’s proper support and care.”
Regarding the situation, Ngo Trung Kien, director of Saigon 2 Garment Company said “we all, especially apparel makers, are being “beaten with a rod” by the market economy. If we have been previously shielded by the government, for instance, petrol price subsidy, we [enterprises] are now “penetrating the rod”.
“Due to the “storm” of inflation and dollar devaluation, the more exports, the more losses we suffer,” Kien said, adding solutions that enterprises propose at the moment are only to reduce losses rather than to increase profits. (Young People, VietNamNet)
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