With China scaling down its domestic production for export due to increasing labour and land costs, Vietnam is emerging as a potential destination for foreign investors. This opportunity requires Vietnamese enterprises to restructure if they want to compete and integrate effectively.

The Bank for the Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) has committed to offer the Vietnamese garment firms financial assistance of 2 billion USD over the next five years, this was stated BDIV Chairman Tran Bac Ha during a workshop held on September 30.

The financial support from Bank for the Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) will be channeled into material area development, trade promotion and market expansion.

Phan Chi Dung, Director of the Light Industry Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said that by joining bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs), Vietnam will gain deeper access to the world’s large economies, including the main markets of Vietnamese garments such as the US, the EU, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

He underscored tariff eliminations resulting from FTAs as an expected boost for Vietnamese exports.

According to Industry and Trade Deputy Minister Do Hai Thang, garment-textile is among sectors that will most benefit from FTAs once they take effect. Opportunities are coupled with major challenges such as origin specifications and regulations issued by import countries. Apart from this, Capital mobilisation is also challenging garment and textile businesses and most of them are small- and medium-sized.

Vietnam with an annual average growth rate of 15 percent over the past five years has been listed among the world’s top ten garment-textile exporters.