The statistics indicated that the country’s total export revenue amounted to US$21.13 billion in September, pushing the total export earnings for the nine-month period of 2018 to US$179.47 billion, up 15.8% year-on-year.

Meanwhile, Vietnam spent a total of US$19.51 billion on imports in September, taking the total import turnover during the January-September period to US$173.14 billion, rising by 11.6% against the same period last year.

As such, the country enjoyed a trade surplus of up to US$1.98 billion in September, some US$1.3 billion higher than the figure of US$700 million earlier predicted by experts, resulting in the overall high trade surplus.

The statistics also indicated trade surplus numbers of US$3.03 billion in 2016 and US$2.62 billion in 2014. Meanwhile, the country ran a trade deficit of US$3.64 billion and US$120 million over the January-September period in 2015 and 2017 respectively.

Five product groups reached US$10 billion or more in export value over the nine-month period this year. Mobile phones and phone components remained the largest export earner, with US$36.69 billion in revenue, growing by 16.4% year-on-year, while textile-garment products came second, with earnings of US$22.45 billion.

Outbound sales of electronics, computers and accessories; machines, equipment and parts; and footwear amounted to US$21.85 billion, US$12.14 billion and US$11.74 billion in revenue, respectively.

On the import side, in the January-September period of 2018, Vietnam spent US$30.81 billion on computers, electronics and accessories; US$24.58 billion on machines, equipment and parts; and US$10.99 billion on mobile phones and accessories.

For the full year of 2017, Vietnam gained a trade surplus of US$2.7 billion, of which domestic firms ran into a trade deficit of US$26.1 billion and foreign direct investment enterprises enjoyed a trade surplus of US$28.8 billion, according to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam.

SGT