Vietnam will export more garments and textiles, especially to the United States, and attract more foreign investors in the domestic apparel industry after its WTO accession, local newspaper Saigon Liberation reported Thursday.

"After joining the World Trade Organization (WHO), we will surely have bigger apparel export turnovers to the United States. Perhaps, they will double in a short period of time," the newspaper quoted deputy industry minister Bui Xuan Khu as saying.

As a WTO member, Vietnam will lure more foreign investors into making garments and textiles in Vietnam and then exporting them to their countries, and companies in a third country into placing orders for apparel items produced in Vietnam, Khu said.

To tap the "golden opportunity," enterprises in Vietnam should themselves strengthen mobilization of capital from such channels as equalization and stock market to develop production, he said, noting that the government will no longer financially assist the garment and textile industry after the country joins the WTO.

Vietnam had to cancel a program on mobilizing some 4 billion U. S. dollars to develop the industry between 2006 and 2015 when negotiating with the United States, its last bilateral negotiation partner, on its WTO accession, local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times said Thursday.

The program is not the government's subsidy because it is designated to mobilize capital from private and foreign-invested sector, and the cancellation will affect only some state-owned enterprises, the newspaper said.

The market share of Vietnamese garments and textiles in the United States currently stands at 3-4 percent, the newspaper noted.

Vietnam is estimated to reap 5.5 billion dollars from exporting garments and textiles, mainly to the European Union and the United States, in 2006, up nearly 14.6 percent against 2005.

Vietnam made garment and textile export revenues of more than 1. 7 billion dollars in the first four months of this year, up 38.7 percent against the same period last year, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

Source: Xinhua