Trade deficit with South Korea reaches $18 billion

The movements of import and export activities with Korea in the first months of 2019 and the whole year of 2018, calculation unit is "billion USD". Sketched by: T. Bình

According to the latest information from the General Department of Vietnam Customs, by the end of August, the total export turnover between Vietnam and South Korea reached $44 billion.

In particular, the total export turnover of Vietnam reached $12.85 billion, increasing by 7.7 percent over the same period last year. The total import turnover reached $31.2 billion, a slight increase of 0.2 percent.

Thus, at the end of August, Vietnam suffered a trade deficit of more than $18 billion with South Korea.

Over the past eight months, South Korea accounted for 7.5 percent of total exports and 18.8 percent of total imports of Vietnam.

Currently, the largest import group of Vietnam from South Korea is computers, electronic products and components.

In the first eight months of this year, this group reached $11.84 billion, increasing by 3.1 percent over the same period last year, accounting for nearly 38 percent of Vietnam's import turnover from the Korean market.

The South Korean market also accounted for 35.3 percent of the total import turnover of computers, electronic products and components of Vietnam in the same period.

Besides the commodity group of computers, electronic products and components, by the end of August, there were six other commodity groups imported from South Korea with a turnover of one billion dollars or more.

Those items include machinery, equipment, tools and spare parts at $4.23 billion; telephones of all kinds and components with turnover of $3.3 billion; and textiles and fabric at $1.36 billion.

While in the export area, the largest commodity group of Vietnam in the Korean market was phones and components with a turnover of nearly $3.4 billion.

In addition, there are three other groups of "billion USD" export goods including textiles reaching $2.2 billion; computers, electronic products and components reaching $1.84 billion; machinery, equipment, tools and spare parts at more than $1 billion.

In 2018, Korea was also Vietnam's largest trading partner with a total bilateral trade turnover of more than $65.8 billion, of that exports reached $18.24 billion; imports reached $47.6 billion.