Export may reach US$70.8b this year

Vietnam’s export continued favourable trend along with forecasts that the country’s trade deficit this year would be below the target of 20%, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

This year’s export turnover may reach US$70.8 billion, rising 24% year-on-year and 16.5% against the year’s target.

On late November 29, MoIT reported Vietnam’s export turnover in November was estimated at US$6.45 billion, up 3.6% from previous month.

Totally in Jan-Nov, the country’s export turnover reached 64.3 billion, a year-on-year rise of 24.4%, averaging US$5.86 billion of export turnover a month, higher than the average level of the year’s target (US$5.04 billion a month).

Amongst key export items, only crude oil, cassava and products from cassava decreased in export turnover while other export commodities saw strong increase in value such as rubber, cashew, rice, chemicals and products, steel and iron, transport means and components, electricity wires and cables, equipments, machines and spare parts.

Cashew and petroleum are included in the group of posting export turnover of over US$1 billion.

Apparel products still rank at the first in export turnover as the country’s key export item with annual growth of over 17% per year.

In Jan-Nov, apparel product export fetched 10.036 billion. As estimated, for the whole year, garment and textile product export would reach over US$11 billion, up 21.3% year-on-year and surpassing the year’s goal of 5.1% and maintaining in the top ten world’s apparel product exporters.

Vietnam’s apparel product export is expected to reach US$20 billion in 2015.

In November, the country’s agro-forestry and fisheries export was estimated to reach US$1.39 billion, bringing the total figure in Jan-November to over US$17 billion, up 20.8% y-o-y.

In 2010, seafood export may exceed the year’s target by 6.5%, reaching US$4.9 billion (up 16.4% y-o-y).

Wood and wooden product exports in Jan-November reached over US$3 billion, rising 32.6% year-on-year.

According to Nguyen Thanh Bien, deputy minister of MoIT, this year’s trade deficit may be around US$12 billion, equalling to the government’s target.

As forecasted, this year’s import would be US$82.8 billion, rising 18.4% y-o-y.

Also according to the report, trade gap in November was US$1.25 billion, accounting for 19.38% of the export turnover, marking the highest level during past nine months and lower than February’s figure by US$30 million.

Amongst over 30 key import items, only five decreased in value and the remaining increased in value such as wheat (up 79.1%), cotton (71.8%), transport means and components (51.4%), fibre (41.7%), milk and products (40.7%), products from oil and gas (40.5%) and materials for garment and textile sector (36.4%). – VOV

Tags: Vietnam exports, Vietnam exports 2010, Vietnam trade