Vietnam’s exports still dominated by FDI firms

According to the General Department of Customs (GDC), as of April 15, exports by FDI firms reached nearly US$10.87 billion, down 13% month-on-month.

Despite the fall, however, the sector accounted for 65.1% of the total export turnover this year (January 1 to April 15, 2017) at US$70.05 billion, which marked an increase of 10.95% over the same period in 2016.

FDI firms in the country now have an accumulated 2017 trade surplus of US$3.92 billion, making them significant contributors to national export value.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s total export from the April 1 to April 15 was US$16.37 billion, a month-on-month drop of 13.9%.

This took total exports for this year to more than US$107.58 billion, an increase of nearly US$16.76 billion or 18.5% over the same period in 2016.

However, the months leading to April 15 have seen a trade deficit of US$2.56 billion, about 4.9% of export value.

On the other hand, Vietnam’s imports from January 1 to April 15, 2017 reached US$55.07 billion, up 23.1% over the same period last year.

Accumulated import turnover for FDI firms reached more than US$33.06 billion, up 23.7% year on year, accounting for 60% of the nation’s total imports.

The GDC report said the manufacturing sector will grow significantly with the opening of new FDI factories, on top of a record FDI disbursement of US$15.8 billion in 2016. The construction sector should benefit in particular from higher FDI disbursements as also continued public investments in the energy and transport sectors.

The first quarter has also saw foreign firms add US$7.71 billion in newly registered and supplemental capital. They increased their capital contribution and share purchases by 77.6% over the same period in 2016, with US$2.9 billion for 493 newly registered projects and US$3.9 billion for adding capital to 223 existing projects.

On the domestic front, export value for certain goods showed strong declines: steel was down 62%; computer, electronic parts and accessories, down 27.8%, textiles, down 20.4%; wood products, down 23.8%.

Only a few goods showed improvement in export value. Rice was up 6.5% and mobile devices and accessories went up three percent.