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Vietnam trade deficit drops: Official figures
Vietnam's trade deficit dropped to an estimated US$2.1 billion for the first half of the year as imports dived, according to recently released figures.
Exports in the first six months fell by 10.1 percent year-on-year to $27.61 billion, while imports totalled $29.72 billion, down by 34.1 percent, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in a preliminary report.
For the month of June alone, Vietnam booked an estimated trade deficit of $1.2 billion.
The country's trade deficit hit a record of $17 billion in 2008.
In the six-month period, Vietnam - a low-income but booming economy where the gross domestic product grew by 6.18 percent last year - spent $2.12 billion on steel imports, down more than half compared with the same period last year.
Vietnam's year-on-year imports of machinery and equipment were down by nearly a fifth to $5.34 billion, while fertiliser imports fell a third to $710 million.
The country earned $4.07 billion from exports of garments and textiles, and $1.09 billion from coffee, down by 12.2 percent.
Vietnam, the world's number two rice exporter, increased its exports of the grain by nearly a quarter to $1.8 billion.
Between January and June, the Southeast Asian nation - which has sizeable offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea - saw crude oil export revenues fall 41.5 percent to $3.3 billion.
During that period, Vietnam saw industrial production rise to $18.5 billion, up by 4.8 percent year-on-year, said the GSO.
The non-state sector reported an increase of 7.6 percent, followed by the foreign invested sector with 4.5 percent. The state-owned sector recorded only an 1.5 percent increase in output.
thanhnien, afp
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