Hanoi (VNA) - Amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 epidemic, ♓many enterprises have started to produce masks to supply to the market, meeting needs of people for disease preven♛tion.

However, to help consumers purchase masks quickly and conveniently as well as ensuring the quality of the masks, besides being active in production, it is necessary to have synchronous participation of many parties, including distributiors and retailers. The proposal was made at a meeting on anti-epidemic masks production and supply organised by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Hanoi on March 17.

Sufficient capacity to meet domestic demand

According to Cao Huu Hieu, Deputy General Director of Vietnam Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex), with the current facemask's production capacity of member units, supply to the market has been significantly increased. As of March 15, Vinatex provided approximately 10 million antibacterial cloth masks to the market. Besides, more than 300 tonnes of cloth supplied by six antibacterial fabric raw material suppliers of Vinatex were distributed to mask production units, equivalent to about 16 million masks. Not only Vinatex, many other businesses have also joined the chain to produce masks, serving market demand. This will be an important source of supply to meet consumers in many localities as the pandemic remains complicated. A report from the Department of Industry under the Ministry of Industry and Trade shows that with the production capacity of 20 enterprises in the textile and apparel industry, it is expected that by the end of March, the number of masks supplied to the market will reach 57 million units. “With such capacity, domestic garment and textile industry is fully capable of meeting domestic demand, serving disease prevention, even exporting,” according to Nguyen Khai Hoan, Deputy General Director of Industry Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Connecting, opening market

It can be seen that being active in domestic supplies has contributed significantly to the realisation of the dual objective of "stabilizing the market and preventing the disease." Representative of Saigon Co.op shared that with over 800 selling points nationwide, every day the business has provided over 20,000 masks at a non-profit price. This has contributed significantly to bringing high quality goods directly to the people, as well as easing the burden for many businesses without direct distribution and retail systems. Truong Van Cam, Vice President and General Secretary of Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association shared that with the capacity of a leading country in textile and apparel export, Vietnam can completely meet high demand for masks, even exporting them. As per the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Minister Tran Tuan Anh highly appreciated the participation of textile enterprises in the past time in actively coordinating with mask distributors in order to ensure COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control effectively while serving people’s demand. The Minister suggested that distribution businesses should continue to better ensuring the supply of essential goods in general and facemasks in particular. With the recommendations of enterprises, Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh has requested relevant departments to gather information to report to the Government in time while  developing plans to supply masks in residential areas, giving free masks to policy beneficiaries Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh also affirmed that in addition to ensuring production capacity and supply to domestic market, Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises can fully guarantee a large number of masks to export for humanitarian purpose./.