Export value in first 4 months
Ha Noi, April 25 (VNA) -- Viet Nam registered an export value of USD 1.31 billion in April, bringing total export earnings in the first four months of this year to more than USD 4.88 billion or a 17.7 percent year-on-year increase, according to the General Statistics Office, GSO.
The country shipped more than 1.13 million tonnes of rice abroad in the January-April period, up 55.4 percent, year-on-year.
Export items recording high rises included crude oil, up 26.1 percent year-on-year and earning USD 1.1 billion; seafood, up 62.6 percent with an export value of USD 506 million; fruit and vegetables, up 151 percent with USD 118 million; coal, up 18 percent with USD 35.4 million; and textile and garments, up 12.3 percent with USD 584 million.
The growth rate of export value in the first four months of this year was lower than that of last year due to sharp drops in the prices of farm produce and commodities such as rice, coffee, tea, groundnut, pepper, rubber and crude oil.
Local farm produce exporters have exported a larger volume of farm produce for lower earnings. For example, the rice export volume in the period under review increased 55.4 percent but their earnings only rose 21.8 percent compared to the same period last year. Coffee exporters suffered a value reduction of more than 20 percent while their export volume was up 45.6 percent, and pepper exporters registered an export value drop of 47.4 percent while their shipments rose 29.3 percent.
Also in January-April, the country's import value was registered at USD 5.02 billion, up 10.2 percent year-on-year. Of the figure, the State sector made up USD 3.6 billion, up 8.6 percent, and the foreign-invested sector accounted for USD 1.4 billion, up 14.6 percent. The first four months of last year recorded an import value growth rate of 33.4 percent, much higher than that of this year, because the prices of Viet Nam's imports fell markedly over the past year.
While the foreign-invested sector enjoyed a surplus export value of USD 868 million, the local economic sectors posted a surplus import value of more than USD 1 billion in the January-April period. In other words, the surplus import value of the entire national economy was USD 134 million in the first four months of this year, making up 2.7 percent of the total export turnover.--VNA
