Vietnam trade deficit may hit 685 mln USD in 6 months

Vietnam's trade deficit in the first half of 2012 is estimate to hit 685 million U.S. dollars, up 10 % year-on-year, local media cited sources from the Vietnam's General Statistics Office (GSO) as saying on Monday.

During the first months of 2012, the country's export price increased by 6.9 % year-on-year to 53.812 billion U.S. dollars, while import price surged 22.2 % to 53.127 billion U.S. dollars, according to GSO.

The foreign direct many(FDI) sector gained the highest export price at 32.65 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 37.3 % over the same period last year. Meanwhile, the domestic sector saw a year-on-year rise of % to 20.47 billion U. S. dollars, local daily Vietnam News reported on Monday.

During the period, telephones and components achieved the highest export increase rate of 129 % to 4.69 billion U.S. dollars.

Meanwhile, agricultural, forestry and seafood exports bagged 13. 6 billion U.S. dollars, up 14 % year-on-year, of which agricultural products earned 7.7 billion U.S. dollars (up 9.6 %), seafood with 2.9 billion U.S. dollars (up 10.6 %) and forestry with 2.3 billion U.S. dollars (up 22.7 %).

Other export products with high increases in price include cashew nuts with an increase of 30 % to 685 million U.S. dollars, wood and wooden products up 24.4 % to 2.22 billion U.S. dollars, crude oil up 12.5 % to 3.83 billion U.S. dollars, and garments and textiles up 8.7 % to 6.76 billion U.S. dollars, according to GSO.

The country's export of rice in the first half is estimated at additional than 2.7 million tons, worth 1.33 billion U.S. dollars, a decrease of 20 % in volume and 23 % in price compared with the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the import price for the FDI sector rose by 26.1 % to 27.98 billion U.S. dollars in the first months as the sector continued to witness high increase in production and exports.

The domestic sector witnessed a fall in import price of 8.2 % to 25.82 billion U.S. dollars over the same period last year.

A lot of products that rely on imports of materials for production saw falls in import price, by 34.1 % to 1.35 billion U.S. dollars for autos, 29.9 % to 440 million U.S. dollars for cotton, 13 % to 1.22 billion U.S. dollars for animal feed and 10 % to 644 million U.S. dollars for fertilizer.

The low trade deficit in the first half of this year was due to high steady increase in exports along with declining increase in imports, according to GSO.