The Vietnam Leather & Footwear Association (Lefaso) reports a 5.3 percent increase in the country's production of athletic shoes to 29.7 million pairs for the first 11 months of this year. The production of other types of shoes increased at a higher rate of 10.3 percent to 5.2 million pairs over the same period. About 80 percent of Vietnam's shoe production is exported. In 2010, 46 percent of the country's exports went to Europe and 17 percent to the U.S. At the recent World Footwear Congress in Rio de Janeiro, a representative of Lefaso complained about an increasing shortage of labor, which is leading the country's producers to invest more in quality than in quantity, and to use more machinery. Athletic shoes still constitute around 60 percent of the total export value of Vietnam's shoe industry. Pou Chen is the largest of the 420 shoe firms registered in the country, 40 percent of which are controlled by foreign interests (more in Shoe Intelligence).

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