The Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association has issued an Official Letter in response to Official Letter No. 5252/BNV-CTL&BHXH dated July 17, 2025 of the Ministry of Home Affairs on the consultation on the draft submission, Decree regulating the minimum wage in 2026.
The Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association agreed with the content in the Draft Decree regulating the minimum wage for employees working under labor contracts sent by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Government on the necessity of increasing regional minimum wages and the increase period from January 1, 2026.
However, regarding the specific increase of 7.2% of regional minimum monthly and hourly wages, VITAS believes it is too high compared to the actual payment conditions of many businesses. VITAS points out 3 reasons:
Firstly, Vietnamese textile and garment enterprises are mainly small and medium enterprises (accounting for 93.2% of the total number of enterprises in the industry). Compliance with the regulation on increasing the minimum wage by 7.2% is really a pressure for businesses, especially for startups in rural, remote and isolated areas, affecting new job creation.
Secondly, the Vietnamese textile and garment industry is currently facing great pressure from the US tariffs announced by President Trump to apply to Vietnamese goods exported to the United States (about 40% of the total export turnover of the industry is exported to the United States). Currently, there are no official or specific regulations for the items, so businesses are under psychological pressure and cannot proactively sign new orders.
Currently, the textile and garment industry spends over 85% of its production capacity on exports, while the world's business environment, in addition to US countervailing taxes, is also extremely fluctuating and unpredictable, for example, war, geopolitical conflicts, trade conflicts between major trading partners of Vietnam, especially increasing fuel and logistics costs...
For the above reasons, VITAS proposes that the minimum wage increase this time should only increase to a maximum of 6.5% from January 1, 2026 to both improve the income of the simplest workers working in normal working conditions and help businesses reduce the burden of cost increases, because when increasing the regional minimum wage, insurance contributions and union fees also increase accordingly.
"As far as we know, the 7.2% increase also included 18.75% of the National Wage Council members representing difficult industries voting against" - VITAS's document stated.
Responding to the comments of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association, in the Ministry of Home Affairs' Acceptance Explanation Table, the adjustment of 7.2% was based on the proposal of the National Wage Council in report No. 09/BC-HDTLQG dated July 25, 2025 sent to the Government (in which, the Vietnam Textile and Garment Association and the Vietnam Small and Medium Enterprises Association are the two members of the Council who participated in the vote to recommend this adjustment level).
