HANOI: Vietnam’s oil products imports from Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia continued to surge in May compared with the same month in 2014, following a sharp reduction in import duty in January, according to Vietnam Customs data released late Monday.
Singapore remained the top supplier of oil products in May with 357,669 mt, up 26.2% year on year.
Imports from Thailand increased fourfold to 139,564 mt, and imports from Malaysia jumped 84.6% to 63,925 mt.
From January 1, Vietnam began implementing its import tax commitments under three separate agreements — ATIGA, and the ASEAN-China and ASEAN-Korea free trade agreements, according to the finance ministry.
ATIGA lowered the tariff on gasoline imported from ASEAN nations, including Singapore, to 20% and on diesel, kerosene and fuel oil to 5%.
Under ATIGA, the import duty on gasoline will be removed from 2018 and on diesel, kerosene and fuel oil from 2016 onwards.
Vietnam’s imports from China and Taiwan all fell in May from a year earlier. They do not have the same low tax rates as ASEAN nations.
Overall, Vietnam imported 746,831 mt of oil products in May, down a marginal 0.8% year on year and down 30.6% from April.
Over January-May, the country imported 4.29 million mt of oil products, up 16.6% year on year.
The combined imports from Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia over January-May jumped to 2.859 million mt, up 86.4% year on year and accounting for 66.6% of the total imports in the period.
