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Vietnam imports more produce from the US than it exports
Vietnam, for the first time in five years, imported more produce form the US than it exported, according to the US Department of Agriculture USDA.
Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon, citing the figures released by USDA, has reported that Vietnam’s trade deficit in farm produce has reached $78 million in the first three months of year. Since 2005, Vietnam has exported more than imported.
According to USDA, which uses a different calculation method than Vietnam’s, in the first three months of the year, the farm produce import revenue from the US reached $417 million, a sharp increase of 79.6 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s farm produce exports to the US increased by 10.58 percent, $339.3 million, which showed that Vietnam imported more than exported to the US market.
Many key products of Vietnam have seen the export revenue decreasing; including black tiger shrimp which accounts for 50 percent of the total seafood export revenue to the US market. In the first three months of the year, the shrimp export revenue decreased by one percent, but the rice export turnover to the US decreased by 78 percent.
Because Vietnam has to import materials for domestic production from many different markets, including the US, the import turnover in the first three months increased sharply. Especially the timber imports from the US, which increased by 135 percent. While wheat imports increased by 280 percent, soybean by 52 percent, and dairy products increased by 183 percent.
In the Vietnam-US two-way trade, Vietnam has always exported more than imported; the trade gap has been gradually narrowed in recent years. In 2005, Vietnam’s farm produce exports were four times higher than the imports. In 2009, Vietnam exported $1.44 billion worth of farm produce to the US, while it imported one billion dollars worth.
vietnamnet, TBKTSG
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