Choose a sustainable direction
Preparing to enter the new year of 2021 - a year of expectation for many difficulties and challenges, the business community is working at full capacity to compensate for the decline in production in the first months of the year. Besides, businesses have also calculated for production development plans in the following years.
Huynh Quang Thanh, General Director of Hiep Long Company Limited in Thuan An city said that at the time many furniture export enterprises have built up long-term strategies as the opportunities and challenges are coupled ahead. In fact, the business picture in the context of Covid-19 shows that enterprises that have built up governance models towards sustainable development have proven to be more resilient. Orientation for sustainable development often brings about better initiatives and in the context of difficulties, many companies have achieved success and persistence. Many businesses have also found out opportunities to break through and overcome difficulties by not only ensuring jobs for workers but also expanding the market and contributing to the budget. Hiep Long Company in the epidemic still achieved growth of over 20% over the same period. Right now the company continues to develop a wide export market in Europe, Asia, and America instead of focusing on only one market of large quantity.
The Covid-19 epidemic caused a more severe breakdown in the global supply chain. However, this also brought up opportunities for Vietnamese enterprises to form new supplying chains. Nguyen Duc Thuan, Chairman of the Vietnam Leather, Footwear and Handbag Association, said that the recovery of the footwear industry largely depends on the Covid-19 epidemic. In early 2021, if the epidemic in the world is controlled, the footwear industry will have a chance to break through because the supplying chain is being reorganized and is expected to move to Vietnam and other countries in ASEAN region. Domestic companies would have an opportunity to receive valuable orders.
"Thai Binh Investment Joint Stock Company promotes digitization in production management and operations and sees it as the foundation for a breakthrough in the next stage. If we cannot keep pace with the technology, we will be left behind in the current break-head developmental trend," said Nguyen Duc Thuan.
Lim Chiew Seng, Director of White Feathers International Co. Ltd. in Ben Cat town, said that in 2020, the company's revenue increased by nearly 200% compared to 2019. The company has plans to expand production to satisfy more and more plentiful orders. At the same time, the company pays special attention to safety in production and sees it as a long-term development strategy alongside with technology. Without safety in production, he explained, all results would not be sustainable. The plant strictly controlled the disease of Covid-19 and fire and explosion.
To be ahead of the supplying chain
Experts believe that Vietnam has created enormous advantages when it comes to good disease control with a very stable environment and membership of many free trade agreements. If Vietnamese enterprises could grasp the opportunity, the could completely take advantage of the shifting wave of investment capital and supplying chains to become an important link in the global value chain. However, it should be noted that this new wave of investment shifts mainly focuses on the field of manufacturing high-tech products. Opportunities are great, but it is not really easy to grasp.
In fact, at present, many purchase orders are moving to Vietnam, but Vietnamese enterprises often quote 2 or 3 times higher than prices than elsewhere. The reason is that the input costs of enterprises are very high, tax fees, high bank interest rates, unofficial costs and most of the input materials increase, making it difficult to reduce costs to become competitive and accessible to the supplying chains. Do Xuan Ngoc, Director of Trung Dung International Joint Stock Company, a unit of more than 20 years in the supporting industry, said technology and capital resources are a huge barrier for businesses to participate the supplying chains at home and abroad - the only way to reach the destination. Therefore, he believed that businesses should invest in depth, starting as branches of enterprises in the supplying chain to develop instead of being spreading but the quality is not guaranteed.