Although Vietnam - the world's fourth largest textile and apparel exporter - has huge potential for cotton cultivation and production, the local sources supply less than 2 per cent of the total requirements and the industry imports huge quantities from outside. The country's Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex) now plans to invest $441.3 million in 59 textile, dyeing, garment and infrastructure projects over the next two years alone. Government policies are favourable to industry and entry barriers are not high. Vietnam's textile and apparel industry is now looking forward to another boom, and presents an opportunity for others to cash in on its growth plans.

Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex), the apex body of the textiles industry in that country, has declared that Vietnam has become the world's fourth largest textile exporter. In the first half of this year, the country earned an estimated $12.18 billion from textile and clothing products -a year-on-year (YOY) increase of 10.26 per cent. The industry is well on track to meet its 2015 export target of $27- 27.5 billion. The three largest importers of Vietnamese products are United States - with a YOY growth rate of 11.01 per cent, South Korea - with a YOY growth rate of 8.33 per cent, and the European Union - with a YOY growth rate of 8.2 per cent. 

Vietnam's garment and textile industry consists of three sub-sectors: up-stream sector (fibre production), mid-stream sector (fabric production and dyeing) and down-stream sector (garment manufacturing). In the Initial years, the sub-sectors that produced fibres or fabric were not up to the mark in quality and were mainly used for domestic consumption. 

Although Vietnam has huge potential for cotton cultivation and production, the local sources supply less than 2 per cent of the total cotton requirements and the textile industry imports huge cotton quantities from outside. The local fabric industry supplies about 20 per cent of the total input demand by the garment sector, the rest is imported from overseas for export-oriented garment industries