Vietnam’s exports of face masks in July were hit by a decline of approximately 35% in comparison to last month, according to figures released by the General Department of Customs.

Face mask exports in July suffer fall  amid COVID-19 second wave 

A total of 62 Vietnamese companies were able to produce 153.82 million medical face masks throughout July, marking a drop of 82 million items from June.

The past seven months has seen the country export more than 711 million masks of various types to dozens of nations globally, including the United States, Europe, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc gave the green light to export medical face masks without any caps in regard to export volume. This policy was initiated to ensure that Vietnam would not miss out on the opportunity of becoming the largest face mask producer in the world amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The Government therefore enacted Resolution No 60/NQ-CP dated April 29 which removes Resolution No 20’s regulations on licenses for the export of medical face masks. In effect, this eases rules and regulations on the product’s exports and means that medical face masks can be freely exported without caps imposed on export volume.

Despite these plans, coupled with complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of domestic enterprises believe that the demand for different types of face masks, such as medical masks and antibacterial cloth masks, is starting to become saturated.

Evidence for this can be seen as July witnessed a slowdown of national exports of the product due to the second wave of the pandemic showing signs of abating in many countries worldwide.

According to local drugstore owners, the demand for medical and antibacterial masks originally began to decrease due to citizens purchasing a sufficient supply and opting to use cloth masks instead.