India has great opportunities to provide raw materials for Vietnamese textile industry, vice chairman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), Doan Duy Khuong said at the Vietnam-India textile cooperation conference held at Hanoi recently.

Vietnam needs more than 500,000 tonnes of cotton per year to meet rising demand. The domestic garment and textile sector had to import a large quantity of cotton as the country’s cotton output met only one per cent of local producers’ demand, he said.

India is the world’s second largest manufacturer of cotton, silk, cotton cellulose, and fibers with approximately 100 billion US dollar in revenue a year, of which 40 billion US dollar was from exports.

During the visit of Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung on October last year, the Indian Government had offered a 300 million US dollar line of credit to Vietnam as an impetus to accelerate textile trade and investment between the two countries, DoThang Hai, deputy minister of industry and trade said.

The Vietnam textile industry had grown significantly in recent years and will continue developing in the future, Khuong said. Vietnam’s garment industry, whose exports are growing at 20 per cent per year with a turnover forecast at 40 billion US dollar in 2020, accounts for 20 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The bilateral trade ties between Vietnam and India have witnessed significant growth with total trade turnover of 5.59 billion US dollar in 2014, increasing by 9.84 per cent compared to 2013. Total trade between the two countries reached more than 3 billion US dollar through the first seven months of this year.