Producers crack on with fresh orders while preparing for all 2022 eventualities, illustration photo

Chen Shu Ming, director of Taiwan’s Poyun Electronics Vietnam Co., Ltd. in the northern province of Hai Duong’s Cong Hoa Industrial Zone, said that all workers had returned to work to fulfil export orders. “Our company was the first in this industrial zone in Hai Duong to have an outbreak of COVID-19 in 2021. After a period of struggling, the company has learned from the experience. Since last April, the company has exported over 18 million products per month on average, equivalent to before the pandemic emerged. The company’s export target in 2022 is expected to hit $54 million.”

Hong Kong’s apparel maker Worldon Vietnam Co., Ltd., in Ho Chi Minh City plans to recruit about 8,000 more workers to serve the needs of production expansion in the current quarter. General director Zhou Gao Feng said that nearly 13,000 employees have received three vaccine shots. “Since that time, we have not had any new F0 infections in the factory which is great news. This is the basis for us to expand production this year.”

Local companies are also joining foreign-invested enterprises in ramping up production.

Leading steelmaker Hoa Phat Group said that it has signed a contract to export hot-rolled coil to Italy with a total capacity of 35,000 tonnes. According to Tran Ngoc An, deputy head of sales at a Hoa Phat subsidiary, this first order to Europe has opened up a large consumption market for the group’s products.

In other sectors, Truong Tien Dung, general director of Saigon Seafood Business JSC, said that work is back underway after the break. “At the beginning of 2022, the number of orders is quite large in both the domestic and the overseas market. Export orders to markets such as South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands are quite regular, at about 5-7 containers per month. Meanwhile, in the domestic market, the number of fresh orders for retail distribution systems saw stable demand,” said Dung.

Production in key cities and provinces are also witnessing forward momentum.

According to the southern province of Binh Duong’s employment service centre, in 2022 businesses are expected to have additional recruitment needs of about 40,000-50,000 workers to meet the needs of signed and new orders. Among them, leather shoes, textiles, electronics, wood, food, and trade and services are the sectors with highest demand for labour.

Forecasting the prospects for the year, general director of the General Statistics Office (GSO) Nguyen Thi Huong said that government regulations introduced in the past six months or so have made a positive impact on production and business activities.

Specifically, the results of a GSO survey on business trends in processing and manufacturing showed that 81.7 per cent of enterprises forecast production in the first quarter of 2022 to continue to be more positive and stable compared to the previous quarter.

Around 83 per cent of enterprises surveyed say that the number of new export orders in the first quarter will increase in comparison with the same period year.