Over 800 million USD of trade surplus recorded in Q1

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

Vietnam enjoyed trade surplus of 809 million USD in the first quarter of 2021, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

The office said that in March, import-export activities recovered strongly with total value of 66.73 billion USD, up 36.8 percent over the previous month and 14.7 percent year on year, with trade surplus of 1.39 billion USD.

In the first quarter of this year, total trade value reached 176.35 billion USD, up 14.4 percent year on year, including exports of 88.58 billion USD. In the period, the domestic economic sector earned 23.27 billion USD, a rise of 22 percent year on year, while the foreign-invested sector (including crude oil) enjoyed 65.31 billion USD, up 10 percent.

Export revenue of over 1 billion USD was seen in 15 export commodities, accounting for 80 percent of the country’s total. Processing-manufacturing products contributed 89 percent to the total exports, while contributions by agro-forestry products, fisheries, fuel and mining products were 6.9 percent, 2.7 percent, and 1.4 percent, respectively.

In the January-March period, the country imported 87.77 billion USD, a rise of 15.9 percent over the same period last year, with 29.43 billion USD by the domestic sector and 58.34 billion USD by foreign-invested sector. As many as 93.8 percent of the imported goods were materials serving production.

In the first three months of this year, the US was the largest export market of Vietnam, consuming 25.2 billion USD worth of goods. It was followed by China with 27.6 billion USD.

In order to promote export activities in the time to come, the Ministry of Industry and Trade advised trade associations and businesses to apply preventive measures to avoid scams, while carefully choosing banks for payment in the current period, and optimising advantages from 15 free trade agreements between Vietnam and partners to persify their markets.

The ministry has directed trade offices in European countries to support businesses to switch import-export activities from Russia and Ukraine to suitable markets in the region./.