Nearly 500,000 employees in Vietnam 's footwear industry are likely to lose jobs due to being affected by an anti-dumping case, according to a local association on Monday.

Out of the nearly 500,000 footwear workers, 80 percent are women, the Vietnam Leather and Footwear Association (Lefaso) said, noting that the European Commission (EC), which started to investigate last July whether leather-upper shoes made in some Asian countries sold at below cost in Europe, on Feb. 23 proposed anti-dumping duties of up to 16.8 percent on Vietnamese leather- upper shoes.

The provisional duty will be phased in over a period of six months, beginning at about 4 percent on April 7.

The Lefaso said some foreign-invested enterprises are showing signs of moving their footwear factories out of Vietnam, fearing that the high duties will affect their products' competitiveness.

Vietnam exported 265 million pairs of shoes of different kinds to the European Union (EU) last year. Some 80 millions pairs will be affected by new tariffs, according to a recent press release by the EC to Vietnam.

Vietnam, which earned 582 million U.S. dollars from supplying footwear of different kinds to the world market in the first two months of this year, up 30.9 percent against the same period last year, is expected to reap footwear export turnover of 3.3 billion dollars in 2006, up from over 3 billion dollars in 2005, the Lefaso said, noting that its key footwear markets include the EU, the United States and Japan.

The Lefaso is encouraging footwear firms in Vietnam to penetrate more deeply into Japan, the United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Central Asia and East Europe. Relevant Vietnamese agencies are intensifying trade promotion activities, expanding support to leather products manufacturing enterprises and exporters, and further studying fashion trends in overseas markets to make suitable products.

Source: Xinhua