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The 9 outstanding features of Vietnam’s foreign trade in 2011
The year 2011 witnesses the import and export turnover on the rise and the trade gap on the decrease, which should be seen as the “good news” for Vietnam’s foreign trade.
1. Growing in difficulties
At the beginning of the year, state officials and experts all predicted that 2011 would be a difficult year for Vietnam’s exports. The US, EU and Japan markets were all thought to reduce imports due to the difficulties they met. At that time, doubts were raised that the 20 percent of the export turnover growth obtained in 2010 would not repeat in 2011.
Therefore, the import-export turnover growth target set up for 2011, the first year of implementing the resolutions of the 9th Communist Party Congress, was modest at 10 percent.
However, things are clearly much better. According to the General Statistics Office, the export turnover has exceeded the 96 billion dollar threshold, an increase of 33 percent over 2010.
2. Vietnam’s goods jump to new high positions
The import-export turnover was stable in the last 12 months, and no month saw the too low turnover, except February, the Tet month.
The export markets’ capacity was stable at 7.2-9.3 billion dollars a month, while the import turnover has been hovering around 8.2-9.6 billion dollars a month.
Some problems with the foreign trade, such as Filipino businessmen imposed their terms of Vietnam’s rice, or garment companies got less orders in the last months of the year, could not change the high position of Vietnam in the world market.
The total import-export turnover has exceeded 200 billion dollars, two times higher than the 2010’s GDP. Vietnam has surpassed the Philippines to hold to fifth position in terms of import and export in South East Asia, just after Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
3. Trade gap on the decrease
Like in 2009, Vietnam’s foreign trade status witnessed a lot of unexpected changes, especially in the third quarter. During that time, Vietnam changed from the trade deficit status (export turnover was higher than import turnover by 1.1 billion dollars) in July to the trade gap status (import turnover was higher by 1.5 billion dollars) in September.
However, in general, the trade gap has been better controlled with the estimated figure of 9.5 billion dollars in 2011, much lower than that of 2010 (12.6 billion dollars) and 2009 (12.85 billion dollars).
4. Import-export structure doesn’t see big changes
Vietnam still needs to import big quantities of materials for local production, especially the materials for garment and footwear production, and electronic parts.
Regarding the imports, the import turnover of materials, equipments, machines alone was worth 87.6 billion dollars, up by 22.5 percent over 2010. Meanwhile, though the exports increase, but most of them are the outsourced products.
5. Exports’ prices increase
The higher export prices have made a big contribution to the increase in the export turnover in 2011. Rice, coffee, rubber, crude oil and coal exports have been benefiting from the price increases in the world market. Of the 24 billion dollars worth of export turnover increase this year, 7.2 billion dollars have come from the price increases.
6. Vietnam tries to diversify export markets
Vietnam has been trying to make closer approach to the new markets in Africa. Vietnam exports 3.1 billion dollars worth of products to the region, representing a growth rate of 131 percent. New Zealand is also one of the new export markets for Vietnam which has the high growth rate of 29 percent.
Meanwhile, other key export markets have witnessed the higher turnover growth rate than the average level. Exports to South Korea rose by 64 percent, while imports increased by 34 percent.
7. Gold exports and imports affect trade balance
In 2011, the State Bank allowed enterprises to export gold as they wanted and quickly granted import quotas when there were signs of short supply on the market. Therefore, the gold imports and exports have had big impacts on the trade.
By the end of November Vietnam had exported 2.6 billion dollars worth of precious metals and stones, and imported 2.2 billion dollars.
8. 2011 is the year of trade gap controlling policies
On May 23, the General Department of Customs added seven groups of products into the list of the products subject to taxable price examination. Since June 1, alcohol, cosmetics, mobile phones have been only allowed to go through three big seaports of Hai Phong, Da Nang and HCM City
As a result, the import turnover of the products which Vietnam does not encourage to import has increased by 2.5 percent, much lower than the general growth rate of 25 percent.
9. Foreign trade has big impacts on foreign exchange market
The trade gap of 12.6 billion dollars in 2010 had big impacts on the foreign currency market. Due to the big gap between the dollar official and black market’s prices, and the sharp falls in the foreign currency reserves then forced the State Bank to devaluate the local currency.
However, in general, the foreign currency market has been stabilized in 2011 thanks to efforts by the State Bank, with the dollar price index up by 8.47 percent only.
vietnamnet
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