According to the newly updated statistics published by the Vietnam Customs, the total trade turnover in Vietnam for the first half of May (from May 1st to May 15th) have reached USD 17.39 billion, a decrease of 4.7% (~ USD 856 million), compared with the second half of April 2020. Certain commodity groups have suffered a plunge of hundreds of millions of dollars.
As shown in the chart above, the figures for export turnover of telephones, and machines recorded a striking decrease of USD 207 million and USD 128 million respectively. The export value of steel and iron, in the meantime, went down steeply to only USD 73 million – 60,9% lower than the number for the second half of April, while 7% is a decrease rate of export turnover for computers, electronics, and spare parts.
Generally, the total export turnover for the first half of May only equaled to USD 8.22 billion, which is 11.1% lower than that for the first half of May. The aggregated export turnover calculated from Jan 1st to May 15th amounted to USD 89.02 billion, which, however, slightly went up by 0.1% from the figure for the same period last year.
With USD 9.18 billion import value for the May 1st to May 15th period, the total import turnover for the first 5 months was USD 87.59 billion – a 2.6% (~ USD 2.3 billion) lower than the same period last year.
Although the first half of May suffered from a trade deficit of USD 957 million, Vietnam still has a trade surplus of USD 1.43 billion for the nearly first half of 2020.
Another noticeable point is that FDI enterprises held USD 9.86 billion of all trade turnover for May 1st – May 15th period, with the total trade value for the whole 5 months being USD 108.54 billion. This sector, accordingly, witnessed a trade surplus of USD 163 million and USD 8.57 billion for the first half of May and the whole 2020 respectively.
Translated and edited by: Dandelion
