By Sayantani Ghosh and Miyoung Kim

(Reuters] – Vietnam’s factories are looking for workers after many migrant workers were allowed to return home from the coronavirus lockdown, which kept them in Ho Chi Minh City last year for several months. Cento Ventures partners told Reuters that this was done in order for Vietnamese firms to be able hire skilled staff.

There are fears that a massive exodus from the capital and the nearby provinces of industry will hinder the recovery from record-breaking GDP decline in the third quarter.

Cento’s Dmitry Levit stated that “When the government has a heavy hand and hundreds of thousands of people stay in factories, to keep exports churning,” at Thursday’s Reuters Next conference.

Vietnam, home to more than 6 000 textile and apparel factories that employ approximately 3 million people, is one of the top garment producers in the world. These factories supply labels like Zara (NYSE:), North Face and Lacoste. Nike (NYSE:).

After the lifting of restrictions in October, thousands left Ho Chi Minh City. They refused requests to remain at work.

Vietnam last month stated that the country aimed to solve its labour problems by 2022, or before.

Long-lasting and severe lockdowns in Asian nations following the Delta variant have caused havoc for consumers and devastated economies.

“The supply chain has been restructured by the pandemic. Nipun Mehra is the co-founder of Ula Indonesian startup, which provides delivery and inventory services for mom-and-pop kiosks.

Ula is valued at $500 million and was recently funded by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s NASDAQ:

Supply chains that feed large corporations in the West are dependent on supply from the countries of Southeast Asia. In the weeks before Christmas, lockdowns and ports jams had snarled supplies.

Malaysian chip suppliers are important players in global semiconductor production. They predict that it will take 2 or 3 years for the market’s normalisation, even though the crisis is slowly easing.

Levit commented that Malaysia appears to be doing a great job of self-recalibrating,” Levit added.

Justin Hall, who is also a partner in Golden Gate Ventures said the governments of the region weren’t doing as much to relieve the supply crunch and the private sector was incapable of solving these problems.

He said that there may be improvements in the next twelve-18 months but that it was still an unsatisfying status quo at the moment.