Việt Nam’s index of industrial production in the first quarter surged 5.8 per cent year on year. Photo tapchicongthuong.vn

HÀ NỘI - The Industry and Trade Ministry will promote the restructuring of industrial production sectors, especially the support industry, due to difficulties in production during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The pandemic has caused local enterprises difficulties in production because they depend on imported input materials.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Đỗ Thắng Hải said the ministry would focus on restructuring chains for industrial production, especially in large manufacturing and processing industries such as textiles, footwear, electronics and wooden processing sectors.

The restructuring would be carried out to promote sustainable cooperation with some partners such as South Korea, Japan and India to avoid dependence on a few partners or markets as at present.

The ministry would review the situation and demand for input materials to propose production organisation plans and solutions to diversify sources of raw materials for production and business.

It has also proposed the Government consider approval of a resolution on solutions promoting development of the support industry. Based on the resolution, the solutions on developing the support industry would be carried out in all provinces and cities nationwide, reported the Hà Nội Mới (new Hà Nội) newspaper.

Trương Thanh Hoài, director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Industry Department, said Việt Nam had a low localisation rate in industries and mostly imported raw materials and spare parts for domestic production.

Besides that, according to the ministry, Việt Nam’s index of industrial production in the first quarter surged 5.8 per cent year on year, lower than the growth rate of 9.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2019.

Of which, the industrial production of the manufacturing and processing industry in the first quarter of this year rose by only 7.2 per cent year on year, much lower than the growth rate of 10.9 per cent in the first quarter of last year and 15.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2018.

The low growth rate was mainly due to the COVID-19 outbreak that has affected the supply of imported raw materials for domestic industrial production, especially in the processing and manufacturing industries.

At present, domestic garment enterprises have a shortage of raw materials for processing export products. Therefore, many of them have focused on producing masks to meet high demand on the domestic market. The production has helped them to overcome the current difficulties due to available raw materials on the local market. - VNS