Processing industry contributes 78 percent of exports

The processing industry earned approximately 71.9 billion USD from exports in the first seven months of 2015, up 18.7 percent from last year and contributing 77.9 percent of Vietnam’s total export revenue, reported an official from the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT).

In a conference on August 3, Head of the MOIT’s Planning Department Nguyen Tien Vy said that products with export growth include cattle feed (up 16 percent), plastic (11.3 percent), footwear (22.3 percent), and phones & components (28.2 percent). Goods seeing dropping export earnings were seafood (down 15 percent), coffee (33 percent), rice (8.7 percent) and iron & steel (15.7 percent).

The ministry’s report on trade and export revealed that the country shipped abroad 14.5 billion USD worth of goods in July, a 1.2 percent increase from the previous month and 10.8 percent against the same period last year. The figure has brought export revenue over the past seven months to roughly 92.3 billion USD, up 9.5 percent year on year.

The trade deficit hit 300 million USD in July and nearly 3.4 billion USD over the seven month period, equivalent to 3.7 percent of the total exports. The devaluation of the EUR has fuelled imports of many overseas materials.

According to the MOIT, the monthly export revenue amounted to an average of 13.18 billion USD during the period. For the remaining months, the country needs to boost its monthly export earning to 14.5 billion USD to meet its target of 10 percent growth this year.

The Index-Industry Products (IIP) of the first seven months rose by 9.9 percent annually with several key contributors including the processing and manufacturing sector (up 10.1 percent), mining (9.2 percent), power production and supply (11.5 percent), and water supply and waste-wastewater treatment (7.1 percent).

Industries with high growth include mobile phones (up 56.9 percent), automotives (57.8 percent) and oil & petroleum (37.9 percent).