Vietnam is world's fastest-growing market for cotton: USDA

The increase in Vietnam’s yarn exports, particularly to the world’s largest yarn importer – China, has made the country the world’s fastest-growing market for cotton.

This has spurred opportunities for greater cotton exports from the US to the Southeast Asian nation, according to the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US department of agriculture (USDA).

“US market share in Vietnam has grown to more than half from around a third in only 3 years. Burgeoning imports of US cotton are expected to underpin Vietnam’s record 2018-19 consumption and to surpass projections for 2017-18 record imports and use,” said the latest USDA report ‘Cotton: World Markets and Trade’.

New and existing foreign investment continues to flow into Vietnam’s spinning mills, due to the country’s low-cost environment relative to Japan and South Korea. As a result, China and other foreign exporters (e.g., India and Pakistan) continue to be displaced as Vietnam’s yarn exports to China practically quintupled compared with 2012-13, signifying the expanding link between these countries’ textile industries.

Vietnam was the leading destination for US cotton exports in 2016-17 (and 2017-18 year-to-date), as cotton was the most valuable US agricultural export to the country during the same period, accounting for over 40 per cent of total agricultural export value.

This has continued in 2017-18 as evidence by record US exports to Vietnam from August to June, the report said.

Vietnam’s prowess as the projected second-largest importer in 2017-18 and 2018-19 has helped propel 2017-18 US exports even higher in July 2018, reaching the highest level in over a decade.