Preliminary assessment of Vietnam international merchandise trade performance in the first 10 months of 2020

2. In the first 10 months of 2020, Vietnam‘s trade-in-goods totaled USD 440.09 billion in value terms, up by 2.7% on year-on-year basis. As compared to result of a year earlier, total merchandise exports value increased 5% to USD 229.79 billion and the total merchandise imports value up 0.3% to USD 210.3 billion. Accordingly, Vietnam’s trade balance in 10 months of 2020 was in the surplus of USD 19.5 billion.

3. Trade data disseminated recently by Vietnam Customs announced that the total value of exportation and importation by foreign direct invested (FDI) traders reached USD 295.86 billion in total for the first 10 months of 2020, up by 7.4 % on year-on-year basis. Total value of FDI exportation was USD 162.39 billion, increased by 7%. On import side, the total value of those companies was USD 133.47 billion, up by 8%.

Main Exports and Imports

4. The September of 2020 to October of 2020 increased in total merchandise exports was due to the upwards in mobile phones and parts thereof (up by 3.6% - USD 186 million); Machine, equipment, tools and instruments ... (up by 7.6% -USD 213 million); Foot-wears (up by 11.6% - USD 146 million)...

5.The increase of Vietnam‘s total merchandise exports in the first 10 months of 2020 was due to the upwards in computers, electrical products, spare-parts and components thereof (up by 25.2% - USD 7.33 billion); Machine, equipment, tools and instruments (up by 43.3% - USD 6.39 billion); …

Chart 1:

Top 10 main exported commodities of the first 10 months of 2020 over the same period of 2019

6. The September of 2020 to October of 2020 increase in total merchandise imports was due to the upwards in fabrics (up by 12.4% - USD 122 million); telephones, mobile phones and parts thereof (up by 4.1%- USD 77 million);…

7. On year-on-year basis, imports went up slightly by 0.3%,

equivalent to USD 661 million. The increase in imports was mainly contributed by the following products: Computer electrical products (up by 20.2% - USD 8.61 billion equally); plastic products (up by 9.6% - USD 513 million equally), telephones, mobile phones and parts thereof (up by 3.6%- USD 436 million);…

Trading Partners

8. In the first 10 months of 2020, Vietnamese merchandise trade with trading partners in Asia was totaled USD 282.49 billion in value terms, which moved up 0.8% as compared to the same period of 2019. Trade-in-goods of Vietnam with America reached USD 91.24 billion and increased by 14.9%. The values of other continents were Europe: USD 52.69 billion, down by 3.9%; Oceania: USD 8 billion, up by 0.1% and Africa: USD 5.67 billion, down by 5.4% in comparison with the same period of last year.

9. For the first 10 months of 2020, 5 exporting markets of Vietnam with turnover of over USD 4 billion were: The United States of America (reached USD 62.4 billion, up by 24%); China (reached USD 37.9 billion, up by 14.8%); Republic of Korea (reached USD 16.1 billion, down by 3.6%); Japan (reached USD 15.7 billion, down by 6.2%) and Hongkong (reached USD 8.4 billion, up by 43.8%) as compared to the same period of last year.

10. On import side, four partners exporting goods to Vietnam with turnover of over 4 billion were as follows: China (reached USD 65.6 billion, up by 5.9%); Republic of Korea (reached USD 37.5 billion, down by 5%); Japan (reached USD 16.6 billion, up by 2.7%); Taiwan (reached USD 13.5 billion, up by 7.4%)…