Industrial production continued to gain positive results at the end of the year

In the first nine months of this year, the industrial production index increased by 10.6% compared to the same period in the last year. Photo: Nguyen Thanh.

The highest growth since the year of 2012

According to the latest report of the Ministry of Industry and Trade: in the first nine months of the year, industrial production index increased by 10.6% compared to the same period in the last year, reaching the highest growth since 2012, contributing largely to the overall growth of the economy. In particular, the manufacturing and processing sector continues to maintain a high growth rate, which was the bright point leading the overall growth of the whole industry with the increase of 12.9%, contributing 9.9 percentage points to the overall increase. This is the highest increase of the sector over the years.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai analyzes: “The value added of manufacturing and processing industries is lower than that of the same period in 2017, but much higher than the increase of the first 9 months in the years from 2012 to 2016. In the context of declining mining operations, this is a group that plays an important role, which is the positive sign for the growth in the whole industry.”

The industry group of processing and manufacturing, textiles and footwear are the typical items that gain positive results. The textile and garment export turnover in the first nine months of the year was estimated at $US 22.56 billion, up 17.1% compared to the same period last year, mainly in key markets such as the USA, the EU, South Korea and China... With the footwear industry, the total export turnover of footwear of all kinds is estimated at $US 11.7 billion, up 10.5% compared to the same period in 2017. At present, Vietnam has become the 3rd largest exporter of shoes and bags in the world. The production and export turnover of related products increased rapidly.

In addition to the above mentioned figures, according to Deputy Minister Do Thang Hai, the remarkable point in industrial production from the beginning of the year is that the structure of the industry continues to shift positively, increasing the proportion of processing industries and manufacture, and reduce the mining industry.

Continue positive growth

The Ministry of Industry and Trade forecasts, the industrial production in the last months of the year will get a positive growth. This comes from the favorable factors of the world economy as well as in the country. In particular, the macro-economy has been stable and GDP growth has a breakthrough. Many industries entered the production season to prepare for the end of the year, so production increased highly. Especially, with the group of textiles and garments, footwear..., some big companies have orders till the end of the year, the demand of customers still increases, contributing to the development of production.

In order to promote industrial production in general from now until the end of the year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will continue to concentrate on building and perfecting the institutions, improving the business investment environment and raise resources for the development of industrial sectors that promote rapid and sustainable economic growth.

Besides, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will accelerate the development of institutions to promote the development, application of science and technology, innovation in industrial enterprises; focus on the development of high-quality human resources meeting the requirements of the 4th Industrial Revolution in the Industry and Trade sector; build appropriate mechanisms and policies to increase the attractiveness to encourage all economic sectors to invest in the development of industrial infrastructure systems.

At present, supporting industries are considered as a “base” for the development of industrial production in general. Therefore, looking at the “overall picture” of industrial production in Vietnam, many experts said that, to develop dramatically and stably, more attention should be paid to supporting industries. According to Dr. Luong Van Khoi, Deputy Director of the National Center for Socio-Economic Information and Forecasting: to develop a good supporting industry, it is necessary to design a value chain in the form of each sector, each product. After that, the State should have a policy to attract businesses to join the chain at each stage. By this way, the level of contribution of Vietnamese enterprises in the chain will be stronger, will directly impact on the export products of Vietnam...

From the perspective of representatives of enterprises directly involved in production and export, Mr. Nguyen Duc Thuan, Chairman of Vietnam Leather and Footwear Association, gives a view on productivity of labor. According to Mr. Thuan, labor productivity is a very interesting issue in the field of leather footwear, bags in particular and other industrial production areas in general. At present, many countries around the world are calculating labor productivity per hour.

While the average productivity of Vietnamese leather and footwear enterprises is on 0.6-0.7 pairs/ hour, many foreign companies, applying scientific and technological advances have reached the productivity of 1.2 pair/ hour. This is a big challenge for Vietnamese companies. “I propose that there should be a professional council to calculate the productivity of each manufacturing sector to see where the Vietnamese industries are ranked and to take measures to improve the capacity of each sector, equal to at least 90% compared with foreign enterprises,” he emphasized.