Analysis technical efficiency, technological gap and total factor productivity of Vietnamese textile and garment industries

The study used meta- frontier framework, data envelopment analysis approach and the global Malmquist total factor productivity index to analyse technical efficiency and productivity change as well as its components of Vietnamese textile and garment firms during 2013-2015. The results show that: (i) The total factor productivity of Vietnamese textile and garment firms fell in the period 2013-2015, and technical change is the main reason to constraint productivity growth. (ii) The private garment sector has taken real effort to improve technology. On the other hand, state-owned and FDI garment sectors have been significantly improving technical efficiency in the use of production factors.(iii) FDI textile firms have been improving effectively technology, whereas state-owned textile firms have showed improvements in technical efficiency. Meanwhile, the private textile sector has experienced a slowdown in all components of total factor productivity. (iv) There is a large technological gap among Vietnamese textile and garment sectors, which has become wide for the garment industry. And this gap is the reason for differences in total factor productivity between Vietnamese textile and garment sectors.