HANOI: Vietnam’s total trade value in the first four months of the year gained a year-on-year increase of 20.1 percent to US$125.41 billion, according to the General Department of Customs.
Of which, export value reached $61.34 billion, a year-on-year surge of 15.4 percent, and import value stood at $64.07 billion, a year-on-year increase of 24.9 percent.
In the first four months of 2017, Vietnam had a trade deficit of $2.74 billion, or 2.2 percent of the national total trade value.
Major export products included telephone and telephone parts, textile and garment, footwear, and vehicles and their parts.
During the first four months, export value rose 0.3 percent to $11.37 billion for telephones and parts; 9.1 percent to $7.47 billion for textiles and garments; and 9.6 percent to $4.17 billion for footwear against the same period last year.
Meanwhile, major import products included machinery, equipment, tools and parts, computers, electronic products and parts, fabric, steel, plastic, and materials and sub-materials of the textile, garment and footwear industries.
Machinery, equipment, tools and parts reached $11.32 billion, a year-on-year increase of 38.9 percent.
The import value also surged 24.7 percent to $10.45 billion for the group of machinery, equipment, tools and parts; and 45.4 percent to $3.3 billion for steel products compared with the same period of last year, reported media.
During the period, Vietnam also shipped aquatic products worth $2.1 billion abroad, achieving a growth rate of 8.2 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, vegetable and fruit exports witnessed a year-on-year hike of 32.6 percent in export value to $1 billion.
The four largest import markets of these products were China, the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Vietnam spent $8.52 billion to import agro-forestry-aquatic products from other countries, up 21.4 percent from last year’s figure.
