2.3. Textiles and garments:

Vietnam's garment export turnover in 2022 reached 37.6 billion USD, up 14.7% compared to 2021.

 Vietnam's garment exports slowed down in the last two months of 2022 and were two months when Vietnam's garment export turnover growth decreased compared to the same month in 2021, after the lowest growth in October 2022. This result partly reflects the difficulties and challenges garment exporters are facing, due to the scarce order situation as well as unpredictable fluctuations in the world market. 

Table 6: Garment export markets, 2022

For the whole year 2022, Vietnam's garment exports still increased quite well compared to 2021 thanks to strong exports to most key markets of the US, EU, Japan, South Korea... However, compared to the time before the Covid-19 epidemic, Vietnam's garment exports to some markets have not yet recovered, export turnover still decreased such as China, Russia ...

Notably, compared to the time before the Covid-19 epidemic, Vietnam's garment exports to the markets of Canada, Australia, Mexico, Bangladesh, ASEAN ... again growing at a very high, double-digit rate. Especially, Vietnam's garment exports to CPTPP member markets such as Canada, Australia and Mexico are high, showing that businesses have effectively taken advantage of tariff preferences from new-generation FTAs. Particularly, exports to Canada from 2018 to now have grown very strongly over 20% per year (except for 2020 due to the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic) thanks to the effects and impacts of the CPTPP Agreement.

Table 7: Export garment categories of Vietnam, 2022

Garment exports mainly jackets, T-shirts and pants all had strong growth compared to 2021. Exporting all kinds of goods such as jackets, vests, shirts ... are items that fell during the Covid-19 period have increased sharply and recovered closer to the pre-epidemic period. 

- Textile fiber: Vietnam's exports of all kinds of fibers in 2022 reached 1.57 million tons, worth about 4.7 billion USD, down 18.4% in quantity and 16.0% in value compared to the previous year.

 Yarn enterprises face difficulties in finding and signing new export contracts when there are no new orders from the Chinese market or customers pay low prices. Other markets such as Korea, Japan, Egypt, Turkey, Philippines, Taiwan (China)

Although there are still orders, the quantity is very small, and the selling price is still in a downward trend and has not shown signs of recovery. The reason is due to price competition from competitors, and at the same time China launched a large quantity of cotton stockpiles, causing cotton prices to plummet. China's yarn imports fell as the Zero-Covid policy caused many places to go into lockdowns, disrupt production and reduce domestic demand.

Table 8: Vietnam's main fiber and yarn export markets, 2022

- General assessment:

 In 2022, although there are still many difficulties, especially in the last months of the year, textile and garment exports still recorded a positive increase thanks to the effective use of FTA agreements; In particular, the EVFTA Agreement, which took effect in August 2020, has certain advantages to help export growth to the EU in the group of goods enjoying tax incentives to 0% as soon as the Agreement comes into effect.

In addition, the long-term trend of shifting orders from China to countries with lower labor costs is still ongoing, and this trend is further accelerated in the context of China's "Zero Covid" policy. In addition, the shift in orders also increased after Sri Lanka suffered a financial crisis.

However, textile and garment exports also face some difficulties due to the negative impact of: the supply chain of raw materials affected by the Covid-19 epidemic and covid prevention policies in China; the local currencies of many countries in the region depreciated quite significantly against the USD; prices of raw materials and input fuels for production of the textile and garment industry remain high; The Russia-Ukraine conflict has also affected textile and garment exports to these two countries.