19/05/2017 – Cotton
Vietnam to Rely Heavily on Imported Cotton
Vietnam continues to rely heavily on imported cotton to feed its growing spinning industry. Total cotton imports in CY 2015 were reported at 1.02 million tons or 4.67 million bales, up 34 percent over the previous CY.
The country’s top five cotton suppliers include the U.S., India, Brazil, Australia, Cote d‘Ivoire and Pakistan. These five countries make up 70% to 80% of the total cotton supply to Vietnam.
Vietnam has signed trade pacts with several foreign trade partners. As a result, the country is currently benefiting from significant gains from different sources, including increasing cotton yarn imports from international markets, especially from China, Turkey and South Korea. Vietnam is likely to remain the fastest growing cotton consumer among worldwide largest spinners. In other words, the country will continue to import more cotton in the coming years.
The increasing number of new and existing spinning mills being registered in 2015 increased the number of spindles in Vietnam from 6.3 million in 2014/2015 to 8.27 million in 2016/2017. It is estimated that Vietnam annual spinning capacity reached 990,000 tons at the end of 2015, up about 10 percent over 2014.
Vietnam’s textile and apparel sector are expected to continue experiencing robust growth rates in the short to medium term. This is due to sizeable local and foreign investments in different supply chain production processes including spinning, weaving and knitting, dyeing and finishing, and garment making.
Textile Industry Vietnam is now ranked among the world’s top five textile and apparel-exporting countries. Despite difficulties in the global economy, the pace of growth of Vietnam exports of textile and apparel products expanded in 2015 with an export value of $27.2 billion - an increase of 9.43 percent over 2014.
The United States remains the largest market for the Vietnam textile and garment industry. In 2015, Vietnam garment exports to the U.S. increased 11.5 percent to $10.9 billion, accounting for 40.3 percent of its total export value. Other important international markets for Vietnam apparel products include the EU (12.5 percent), Japan (10.2 percent) and South Korea (7.8 percent).
Source: USDA/FAS April 201,7 Bremen Cotton Report 17-18-2017, published with the kind permission of Bremen Cotton Exchange, www.baumwollboerse.de
