Illustrative image. (Source: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam enjoyed its largest tradesurpluses with the United States (US) and European Union (EU) in the first 11months of 2018, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
Vietnam had a combined trade surplus of 57.5 billion USD with the USand the EU, up 7.3 percent from the same period last year and six times higherthan the country’s total figure of 6.81 billion USD.
This figure substantially contributed to the national foreign exchangereserves, which have grown to a record high of more than 60 billion USD so farthis year.
Over the period, Vietnam had its largest trade surplus of 31.9 billionUSD with the US, up 8.1 percent year on year and 4.7 times higher than thetotal national trade surplus. The most growth was recorded in exports of mobilephones and accessories (49.8 percent), footwear (14.6 percent) and garment andtextile (12.4 percent).
Vietnam’s trade surplus with the EU stood at 25.6 billion USD, ayear-on-year increase of 6.2 percent. Among EU countries, Vietnam posted thelargest trade surplus with the United Kingdom, which imported more than 4.73billion USD worth of commodities from Vietnam in the first 10 months of theyear while the UK’s exports to the Asian nation hit 694 million USD.
Meanwhile, Vietnam ran trade deficits with 27 foreign markets, of whichnine recorded trade deficits of more than 1 billion USD and five othersexceeded 2 billion USD.
As the Vietnam-Korea Free Trade Agreement entered into force, theRepublic of Korea surpassed China to become the foreign market Vietnam postedthe largest trade deficit with. From January to November, Vietnam’s tradedeficit with the RoK was worth 26.6 billion USD, down from 29.2 billion USDover the corresponding period of 2017, or 8.9 percent.
Exclusive of unofficial cross-border trade, Vietnam reported a tradedeficit of 21.6 billion USD with China in the first 11 months, down from 21.9billion USD in the same period last year.
The RoK and China were followed by Taiwan and Thailand which Vietnamhad trade deficits of nearly 8.43 billion USD and 5.04 billion USD,respectively.
Last year, Vietnammaintained a trade surplus of about 2.7 billion USD, the same figure as 2016.
National trade value in2017 was estimated at nearly 425 billion USD. The value of exports wasestimated at 213.77 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 21 percent, higherthan the annual growth rate of 9 percent in export value in 2016.
Meanwhile, the value ofimports in 2017 was estimated at 211.1 billion USD, 20.8 percent higher thanthe previous year.
Foreign-investedcompanies notched a trade surplus of 28.8 billion USD, contributingsubstantially to the total national trade surplus, while the domestic economicsector continued to have a trade deficit of 26.2 billion USD.–VNA
VNA
