The ministry said the processing and manufacturing industry has increased gradually over the months and reached high levels. The industry’s index of industrial production (IIP) increased 12.8 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of this year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) reported.
The rise was much higher than the average 7.1 per cent growth of the entire industrial sector in the period.
The GSO attributed the nation’s IIP 7.1 per cent growth to the breakthrough in the processing and manufacturing sector, which contributed nine percentage points to the overall IIP. This helped offset the strong drop of 8.1 per cent in mining, which reduced 1.8 percentage points from the nine-month figure.  
“Processing and manufacturing has played a key role for the entire industrial sector’s growth in the context of a decline in the mining industry,” MoIT also noted.
Among key processing and manufacturing products that posted high IIP increases in the nine months were television sets (31.6 per cent); electronics, computer, optical products (25.1 per cent); raw steel and iron (28 per cent); and fabric (16.8 per cent).
In the first nine months of this year, fabric and clothing output rose over 15 per cent and nine per cent, respectively. The industry estimated an export turnover of US$19.26 million in the period, up 8.6 per cent year-on-year, of which fibre exports surged 23.3 per cent to $2.62 billion. The Vietnamese products were mainly exported to the United States, European Union, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
The textile and garment are expected to increase 8-9 per cent this year.
As for the footwear industry, its exports in nine months were valued at $10.6 billion, up 12.7 per cent year-on-year.
Thanks to the new school year, the production and business of the paper industry also gained good results. Its IIP rose over 10 per cent.
According to the GSO, the consumption index of the processing and manufacturing industry also rose 9.9 per cent year-on-year, higher than the growth of nine per cent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2016, contributing to the production growth in this industry.
The GSO said to continue growth in industrial production, the industrial sector should reduce inventory because the inventory index of the sector in the first eight months witnessed a year-on-year surge of 10 per cent, 0.01 per cent higher than the growth recorded in the first seven months.