For 2017, Vietnam’s textile and garment sector aims for a growth rate of seven or eight per cent. Vietnam’s textile and garment industry sustained a stable export value growth of 15 per cent in 2010-15. Garment and textile exports in the first half of this year showed a year on year increase of 4.72 per cent and accounted for 41 per cent of the sector’s target for 2016.

Vietnam’s garment and textile sector is still enjoying good growth in exports to the US market even without the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The US and Japan are the two main export markets of Vietnam’s garments and textiles. Enterprises in the sector have continuously made investment in machines and technology to improve their productivity, reduce cost, thus increasing their competitiveness in the two markets.

Vietnam attracts investors with an open economy, a favorable business climate and tax incentives from the World Trade Organisation and has free trade agreements with the EU, Japan and the Republic of Korea. The country has an advantageous productive working age population. It is confident the withdrawal of the United States from TPP will not affect exports.

But it is also possible that once investors see TPP as a fading dream, investment flow in the sector will slow down during 2017-18 in comparison with the 2013-14 period.