Preliminary assessment of Vietnam international merchandise trade performance in the second half of February, 2023

14:28 | 28/03/2023

The Vietnam Customs Statistics announced that in the second half of February, 2023 the total Vietnam’s exports of US dollars 12.47 billion and imports of nearly US dollars 10.69 billion resulted in a trade surplus of US dollars 1.78 billion. Accordingly, the total value of export and import turnover of Vietnam in the second half of February was over US dollars 23.16 billion, down by 10.3% as compared to the first half of February-2023. Furthermore, in the first 2 months of 2023, Vietnam was in trade surplus of USD 3.44 billion.

Vietnam‘s trade-in-goods in the first 2 months of 2023 totaled US dollars 95.83 billion in value terms, climbed down by 13.4% as compared to the performance of the same period of last year.

In the view of Foreign Direct Invested (FDI) traders, the total value of exportation and importation in the first 2 months of 2023 reached USD 68.2 billion, down by 11.8% in comparison to the same period of 2022.

Export:

As compared to the first half of February-2023, second half of the month decreased in the total export value (7.2% - USD 972 million equally) is reflected by downturn in telephones, mobile phones and parts thereof (down by 21% - USD 492 million equally); computer, electrical products, spare-parts and components thereof (down by 8.1% - USD 166 million equally); means of transport (down by 23% - USD 139 million).

Totally, in the first 2 months of 2023 total export value from Vietnam was USD 49.64 billion, climbed down 10% as compared to the same period of 2022 (equivalent to USD 5.55 billion in absolute value terms).

Chart 1: Top 10 main exported commodities of the second half over the first half of February 2023

Preliminary assessment of Vietnam international merchandise trade performance in the second half of February, 2023

Source: Vietnam Customs

Import:

The first half to second half of February shrunk in the total of import value (13.7%) reflected downturn in computer, electrical products , spare-parts and components thereof (down by 19.9% - USD 651 million equally); machine, tools and equipments (down by 12.3% - USD 188 million equally); petroleum products (down by 32.8% - USD 143 million equally).

From January to second half of February-2023, total import value into Vietnam was USD 46.2 billion, went down by 16.7% as compared to the same period of 2022 (equivalent to USD 9.28 billion in absolute value terms).

Chart 2: Top 10 main imported commodities of the second half over the first half of February 2023