Textile firms see profits drop

By Dat Nguyen November 19, 2019 | 08:08 pm PT

Employees work at a garment factory in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Reuters/Yen Duong.

Vietnamese textile firms reported a fall in profits in the first nine months as orders from major markets dried up.

Their pre-tax profits fell 13.8 percent year-on-year and revenues by 1.6 percent, according to a recent report by Hanoi-based brokerage VNDIRECT.

Ho Chi Minh City-based Viettien General Garment JSC, one of the country's leading textile companies, for instance reported a drop of 13.6 percent in revenues.

The growth of textile exports decelerated, standing at 9.6 percent in the first nine months compared to 16.5 percent last year.

The reasons for the slowing growth were buyers’ concern about the U.S.-China trade war and the Vietnamese dong’s continuing strength against the dollar. Meanwhile the currencies of other major textile exporters such as China, India and Pakistan have weakened, leading to Vietnamese exports becoming more expensive.

The dong is up 0.04 percent against the greenback this year while the Chinese yuan has fallen by 5.1 percent and the Indian rupee by 2.3 percent.

Vietnam is the third largest textile exporter in the world. Last year exports were worth $36 billion and the country targets $40 billion this year. The sector employs over two million workers.