Vietnam gained trade surplus of 2.68 billion USD in 2016, the General Department of Customs reported.

The general department said the nation had total trade value of 349.2 billion USD this year, a year-on-year increase of 6.6 percent. However, trade value in December dropped by 0.6 percent to 32.3 billion USD, including 16.3 billion USD in import value and 16 billion USD in export value.

Vietnam had 175.94 billion USD in export value, a year-on-year surge of 8.6 percent and 173.26 billion USD in import value, a year-on-year increase of 4.6 percent in 2016.

This year, the nation gained trade surplus 2.68 billion USD, while last year, it had trade deficit of 3.55 billion USD.

Groups of products with high export value this year did not witness many changes from the previous years, the general department said.

This year, telephones and their components had the highest export value at 34.51 billion USD, followed by 23.56 billion USD from textile and garment exports, 3.3 percent higher than last year.

Other products with large export value included the group of computers, electronics and their components (18.48 billion USD), the group of equipment, machines, tools and parts (10.48 billion USD), footwear (12.92 billion USD), seafood (7.02 billion USD) and the group of transportation means and their parts (6 billion USD).

Difficulties in market and price this year made export value of crude oil drop by 36.7 percent to 2.35 billion USD, the general department said.

In 2016, the group of machines, equipment, tools and parts had the largest import value at 28.09 billion USD, 1.8 percent higher than last year.

It was followed by the group of computers, electronics and their parts with total import value of 27.8 billion USD.

Import value of telephones and their parts dropped by 0.3 percent year-on-year to 10.56 billion USD.

Other products such as steel, material for plastic, material and sub-material for textile, garments and footwear production had high import value of between 5 billion USD and 10.5 billion USD.

In 2016, Vietnam showed growth in import volume of petrol and oil at 14.2 percent to 11.47 million tonnes. It, however, also saw a reduction in import value of these products at 11.7 percent to 4.71 billion USD compared to the previous year.

VNA