Textile giant lays off 2,000 workers

Workers at a textile factory in Tan Do Industrial Park in the southern province of Long An. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

The manufacturer had let go over 1,800 workers last year, according its reports.

Citing its gloomy business performance as the reason, the business said it did not receive any orders throughout the third quarter of this year, ensuring it became the fourth consecutive quarter to suffer from losses. All of the recorded income was generated from the service sector, it said.

Consequently, the company is planning to cut expenses, optimize current assets, and put unnecessary properties on sale in the coming time. In the meantime, it has to re-calculate its human resources planning, it said.

Workers in the textile sector have been most affected by waves of layoffs due to lack of orders, which in turn was the result of high inflation rates, tightened monetary policies, and the gloomy economic picture worldwide.

A June report by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs revealed that 70,000 workers in the textile industry were laid off, and another 66,600 employees suffered from decreased working hours throughout the first five months of 2023.

One of Vietnam’s leading apparel manufacturers with 70 production lines and five factories, Garmex Saigon Corporation boasted as much as 4,000 workers in 2019 and generated hundreds of billions of dong in annual profits. (VND1 billion equals US$41,000.)

It suffered from losses the first time in 2022 as a result of a 93% plunge in orders from foreign business partners.

Generating only VND8 billion in income over the first nine months of 2023, compared to VND245 billion in the same period last year, Garmex Saigon’s accumulated losses since the beginning of the year has reached VND66 billion.