In the first half of this month, Vietnam imported goods worth US$10.2 billion, while its export revenue totaled some US$9.2 billion. Therefore, the country had a trade deficit of US$1 billion, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs.

Key exports such as textiles and garments earn revenues of over US$1 billion each. Vietnam posts trade deficit of US$1 billion in mid-January largely due to the declining exports of foreign-invested firms

A representative of the export tax division under the HCMC Customs Department told Thanh Nien newspaper that Vietnam saw a rapidly increasing number of imported cars in the 15-day period, resulting in a major differential in the trade balance. The country imported a total of over 6,300 cars, worth roughly US$158 million.

Further, two other groups of commodities, which also had the highest import revenues were computers, electronics and their spare parts worth more than US$1.8 billion and machinery, equipment, tools and machine parts worth over US$1.6 billion.

According to the representative, imports and exports typically see some fluctuations in the lead up to the Lunar New Year, or Tet holiday.

For example, exports decrease while imports increase as traders aim to meet the demand for products on the occasion of Tet or raise the volume of imported machinery, equipment and materials as part of strategies to expand investments and reserve raw materials for post-Tet export production.

Customs statistics indicate that key exports such as textiles and garments, phones and their spare parts, and computers earn revenues of over US$1 billion each.

Phones, which used to be the main group of exports in previous years, witnessed a sharp decline in outbound sales in mid-January. The group only earned some US$1.2 billion, compared with the year-ago figure of over US$2.1 billion.

As such, phone exports suffered a decline of over US$800 million, equivalent to some 39% of the group’s revenue. Also, the export earnings of computers, electronics and their spare parts fell by some US$50 million. These factors led to the decline in export value.

Last year, Vietnam posted a trade surplus of US$7.2 billion. The domestic economic sector suffered a trade deficit of US$25.6 billion, but the foreign direct investment (FDI) sector recorded a trade surplus of nearly US$33 billion.

Meanwhile, the trade surplus figure of US$1 billion in the first 15 days of 2019 suggests that foreign-invested firms have reduced their exports but raised imports of machinery and materials. This implies that the national economy is still reliant on the FDI sector.

SGT