HANOI: Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) is proposing the government to promote coal exports amid increasing domestic production, according to Nguyen Khac Tho, deputy head of the MoIT’s General Department of Energy.
Statistics by the MoIT’s Export-Import Department showed that in the first five months of 2015, Vietnam exported 895,000 tons of coal, earning 100 million U.S. dollars.
The figures posted a decrease of 77 percent in volume and 65 percent in value compared to the same period of 2014, Bao Giao Thong (Transport News), an online newspaper under the Ministry of Transport, reported Wednesday.
Meanwhile, during the five-month period, Vietnam produced some 17.58 million tons of coal, up 4.5 percent year-on-year.
At the same time, a total of 14.8 million tons of coal were sold to domestic and foreign markets, down 5.65 percent year-on- year, said MoIT on its website in early June.
The drop in Vietnam’s coal exports over past time has been attributed to Vietnamese government’s policy to limit coal exports which aim to ensure national energy security as well as domestic consumption demand, reported Bao Giao Thong.
Thus, to help reduce coal inventory, the MoIT is sending a document to Vietnamese government on boosting coal exports.
