Vietnam's garment and textile industry kept growing despite the global crisis, an official informed. 'We will certainly meet the annual target by the end of this year because companies are exporting big orders this month,' Le Quoc An, chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association, said. 'We expect to grow at least 1 per cent compared with last year.'
 
An said the country planned to earn 9.1 billion dollars from garment and textile exports this year.  The state-run An Ninh Thu Do newspaper said the country's garment exporters faced declining markets and a slump in prices, resulting in a sharp decline in earnings in the early months of the year. Vietnam's garment industry earned 8.2 billion dollars in the first eleven months of 2009.
 
'Export growth will recover sharply next year so we plan to export [goods worth] about 10.5 billion dollars next year, a 12-per-cent increase compared with this year,' An said.
The biggest importers of Vietnamese garments and textiles are the United States (57 per cent), followed by the European Union (18 per cent) and Japan (9 per cent).