YANGON, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar has launched the 2023 Myanmar International Textile and Machinery Fair in its commercial city of Yangon to bolster the development of the textile and garment industry in the Southeast Asian country and facilitate industrial cooperation with China and other countries.
The three-day event, which opened Friday at the Yangon Convention Center, featured more than 100 Chinese manufacturers of textile and apparel, shoes and bags, and international brands from Japan, South Korea, and the European Union.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the expo, Yangon Region Chief Minister U Soe Thein said the textile and garment sector in Myanmar has created nearly 500,000 jobs in the country.
"For such a thriving industry to acquire new customers, technology and machinery, it is essential to organize such kind of expos," U Soe Thein said, adding that Chinese textile investors are warmly welcomed to invest in Myanmar.
U Min Min, deputy minister of Myanmar's Ministry of Commerce, said the expo is held to promote textile and garment sector development and cooperation with China and other countries.
In Myanmar, garments were mainly manufactured under the cut-make-pack (CMP) system. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, Myanmar earned 5.3 billion U.S. dollars from the exports of CMP garments to over 100 countries.
In the current fiscal year, Myanmar has exported CMP garments to 80 countries. Japan, Poland, Spain, Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, the United States, France, Denmark and Belgium are the main destinations of Myanmar's garments, he said.
The raw materials required for Myanmar's garment industry were mainly imported from China. This year, Myanmar imported over 1 billion dollars worth of raw materials, and over 90 percent of them came from China.
"The garment industry is an important sector for a country like Myanmar as it is not only assisting investment and economy, but also creating job opportunities," he said.
U Min Min said he believes the garment sector in Myanmar, by creating jobs, also benefits the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, especially the goal of "No Poverty."
As the textile and garment industry is an important sector in Myanmar, the Ministry of Commerce has included it in the prioritized list of the National Export Strategy 2015-2019 and 2020-2025.
Myanmar's government and private sector were also collaborating to fulfill requirements to change the garment businesses from CMP system to Free-on-Board (FOB) system, he said.
Ouyang Daobing, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar, said China is a close partner of Myanmar's garment manufacturing industry, and about 60 percent of the investment in Myanmar's garment manufacturing industry comes from China.
Ouyang said he hoped the exhibition would serve as a platform for communication and cooperation between the Chinese and Myanmar textile industry, and further promote cooperation of the whole textile and garment industry chain between the two countries. ■