Meanwhile, the total import value was 6.39 billion USD, down 8.76 percentcompared to the same period last year.
In April alone, Vietnam’s textile and garment exports decreased by 20 percentcompared to March, said Vitas Vice Chairman Truong Van Cam, at an onlineseminar held by the association on May 4.
Difficulties in production due to the COVID-19 pandemic were blamed forreductions in both textile and garment export and import values, he said.
"Vietnam’s textile and apparel industry has never faced negative growth inboth imports and exports like that," Cam said.
Export value dropped by about 6 percent to 8.27 billion USD for garmentproducts, 0.3 percent to 664 million USD for fabric products, 11.5 percent to 1.19billion USD for yarn products and 6 percent to 354 billion USD for textilematerials.
Meanwhile, import value also declined by about 8 percent to 893 million USD forcotton, 2.5 percent to 758 million USD for yarn products, 11 percent to 3.63billion USD for fabric products and 5.8 percent to 1.11 billion USD for textilematerials.
The reduction reflected the industry's lack of export orders, said Cam, addingthat those figures are forecast to drop further in May and June because mostexport orders for those months have been cancelled.
Many enterprises in the industry have bad debts, he said. Many exportgarment enterprises are operating at reduced capacity because they do not havenew orders.
The association reported the cancellation of contracts and lack of newcontracts was due to the reduction of demand for textile and garment in the USand EU during the pandemic. Meanwhile, China also has less demand for importingyarn from Vietnam due to the suspension of production during the outbreak.
With a lack of new export orders leading to fewer jobs and pressure inwage payment, the association has proposed many solutions tosupport enterprises. However, those solutions could not help them maintainproduction until the end of this year.
Tran Thanh Hai, Deputy Director of Ministry of Industry and Trade’sImport-Export Department, said the COVID-19 pandemic had affected exports ofmany products, including textiles and garments. Many enterprises had shifted toproducing cloth face masks to meet domestic demand and exports.
However, the export value at 63 million USD from face masks fromJanuary 1 to April 19 was too small compared to the total export textileand garment value at 10 billion USD in the first four months of the year,according to Vitas.
The textile and garmentindustry is predicted to have a strong reduction in total export value thisyear. In the most positive scenario, its export value will reach about 35billion USD this year, down 10 per cent year-on-year.
In a realistic scenario, the industry's export value is estimated to reachabout 33.5 billion USD, while in a bad case, the export value will only hit 30-31billion USD in 2020./.