45 percent of shoes sold in Vietnam is Chinese-made Employees are seen at a Bitis manufacturing plant in Ho Chi Minh City in this photo illustration. Tuoi Tre Locally manufactured footwear only accounts for 55 percent of the products sold in Vietnam in 2013 while the remaining proportion was Chinese-made products. The statistics was released by the Leather and Footwear Association of Vietnam (Lefaso) at a press meeting to summarize its operation in 2013 on Friday. Lefaso said the country’s footwear market capacity is around 130 million to 140 million pairs of shoes per year, equaling to US$1.5 billion. But the consumption of locally made footwear is only 70 million to 75 million pairs, or 55 percent of the total figure. Chinese products account for the remaining 45 percent. The products are mostly imported to Vietnam across the borders. The Vietnamese footwear and textile sectors also have a heavy reliance on raw materials from China. In the first nine months of last year, for instance, the two industries imported nearly $1 billion of raw materials from China, according to figures released in October 2013 by Lefaso. It accounted for nearly 33 percent of the total raw material import turnovers. TUOITRENEWS