Preliminary assessment of Vietnam international merchandise trade performance in the first half of August, 2017

The Vietnam Customs Statistics announced that in the first half (01-15/8/2017) of August-2017, Vietnam’s trade balance showed a deficit of only US dollars 3 million due to its exports of US dollars 8.63 billion and imports of nearly US dollars 8.63 billion. Accordingly, the total value of export and import turnover of Vietnam in the first half of August was US dollars 17.25 billion, went down by 6.2% as compared to the second half of July-2017.

Vietnam‘s trade-in-goods from January to the first half of August of 2017 totaled US dollars 250.32 billion in value terms. It posted a growth of 20.8% (equivalent to USD 43.17 billion) from the same period of previous year.

In which, the total merchandise exports value was up 18.8% to nearly US dollars 123.94 billion and the total merchandise imports value was up 22.9%, to US dollars 126.38 billion.

In the view of FDI traders, the total value of exportation and importation in the first half of August reached USD 11.17 billion, down by 4.9% (equivalent to USD 527 million) in comparison to the second half of July, 2017. Up to the August, 15th 2017, the total merchandise trade value of FDI traders was USD 163.1 billion, 22.7% higher than the performance of the same period of 2016.

Export:

When compared with the second half of July-2017, export of first half of August decreased by 8.4%, mostly as a result of the decline registered in foot-wear (down by 14.4% - USD 102 million); irons and steels (down by 52.3% - USD 97 million); computer, electrical products, spare-parts and component thereof (down by 8.8% - USD 96 million); textiles and garments (down by 7.3% - USD 93 million); fishery products (down by 13.8% - USD 60 million)...

However, the upturn occurred in exports of some commodities such as: telephone, mobile phones and components thereof (up by 6.6% - USD 105 million); petroleum products (up by 77.3% - USD 18 million); rubber (up by 9.7% - USD 11 million).

Table 1: Top 10 exported commodities of Vietnam from January to August 15th 2017 compared to the same period of 2016.​

Import:

In the first half of August 2017, import decreased by 4% when compared with second half of July, mainly reflecting the shrunken of machine, electrical products, spare-parts and components thereof (down by 7.8% - USD 116 million); fabrics (down by 16.8% - USD 85 million); telephone, mobile phone and part thereof (down by 9.6% - USD 65 million); computer, electrical products, spare-parts and components thereof (down by 4.3% - USD 62 million)...

However, the upturn occurred in import of some commodities such as: other base metal (up by 24.7% - USD 50 million); irons and steels (up by 13.2% - USD 46 million); soya bean(up by 87.5% - USD 27 million)...

Table 2: Top 10 imported commodities of Vietnam from January to August 15th 2017 compared to the same period of 2016