Owing to the growth of Vietnam's textiles industry, which is expected to export $28billion this year, the country’s cotton imports will increase close to those of top-ranked China. The US Department of Agriculture's Hanoi bureau has hiked to a record 5.37million bales forecast for Vietnam's cotton imports in 2015-16.

The figure, representing an increase of more than one million bales year on year, is some 520,000 bales above the USDA's official forecast, although this is up for revision later on Wednesday. And it would put Vietnam, which a decade ago was importing fewer than 700,000 bales of cotton a year, with Bangladesh and China in the club importing more than five million bales of the fibre a year.

Experts point out that this upgrade reflects Vietnamese consumption which “continues to increase in order to meet strong demand from its expanding textile industry”, the bureau said in a report. In the yarn sector, the number of spindles reached 6.3million as of last season, up 24 per cent in three years - with a further 30 per cent spurt to 8.2million spindles expected by 2016-17. The report forecasts Vietnam's yarn exports hitting a record 950,000 tonnes in calendar 2015, up 10.7 percent year on year.