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Trade deficit returns in February
The nation's trade deficit returned this month, following a rare surplus in January, according to the General Statistics Office.
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| Goods are unloaded at the Tien Sa Port in the central city of Da Nang. This month saw a return to a trade deficit after a rare suplus last month. |
The deficit for the first two months of this year, however, was just US$640 million – significantly lower than that of the same period last year, which was $2 billion.
The surge in exports for some products such as vehicle parts, electronic devices and textiles helped shrink the trade deficit.
Export turnover this month reached $8.2 billion, more than 66 per cent higher than in February last year and 15 per cent higher than last month.
The last two months also saw export turnover increase by about 25 per cent. The rate of growth in exports nearly doubled the target rate set for the whole of this year.
The statistics showed that exports were recovering, which will not only help promote economic growth but also improve narrow the trade deficit.
In addition, export prices for Vietnamese products such as pepper have risen by more than 30 per cent, and boosted turnover from exports despite a slight decrease of 4.5 per cent in the quantity of exports.
Meanwhile, the increasing rate of imports was at 11.8 per cent only, much lower than the increasing rate of exports, which also helped narrow the trade deficit.
However, statistics also showed that export turnover of rice, coffee, cassava and rubber this month decreased.
The increase of 2.1 per cent in the rice export price could not make up for the decrease of 46 per cent of export volume, resulting in export turnover for rice reducing by 43 per cent.
Coffee also saw a decrease in both export prices and volume.
Viet Nam recorded a trade surplus of $0.17 billion last month. The average trade deficit for the last year as a whole was at $0.82 billion.
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