Vietnam was estimated to have run a trade surplus of $170 million in January 2012, including $360 million trade surplus done by the foreign direct investment (FDI) sector, the General Department of Vietnam Customs said on its website.
The country’s export-import turnover was $14 billion in the first month of this year, making a decrease of 24% from December 2011 and 9.2% from Jan 2011.
In which, the Southeast Asia country earned a total of $7.09 billion from exports in the month, down 21.9% on month and 3% on year while it spent $6.92 billion to import goods, down 26% and 14.7% on month and on year, respectively.
Vietnam’s export staples in the month are garment and textile ($1.08 billion, down 12.2% on year), crude oil ($526 million, up 13.5% on year), footwear ($544 million, down 1.4%), seafood ($363 million, down 14.9%).
In the month, the country mainly imported computers, electronic products and spare-parts ($793 million, up 48.5% on year), petroleum products ($552 milion, down 13.2% on year), steel ($420 million, up 1.6%).
Of note, the long holidays of New Year and Lunar New Year which fell on January this year affected the country’s export-import turnover. The country’s two-way trade was estimated to rise by 26.9% in January 2012 over the adjacent month of the Lunar New Year 2011 (February 2011). In which, exports value rose by 43.9% and import value increased by 13.3%.
Source: vnagency.com.vn