Vietnam sees trade deficit of 500 million USD in January

Goods are handled at Cat Lai port in HCM City (Illustrative photo: VNA)

Vietnam posted a trade deficit of 500 million USD in the first month of 2022, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

The country's imports expanded 11.5 percent year on year to 29.5 billion USD while exports 1.6 percent.

Vietnam’s export-import turnover in the month was estimated to value at 58.5 billion USD, down 11.7 percent month on month but up 6.3 percent compared to the same period last year.

The domestic sector earned 8.2 billion USD from exports, up 20.1 percent against the same period last year. The foreign-invested sector (including crude oil) raked in 20.8 billion USD, a decrease of 4.2 percent.

Seven items recorded export turnover of more than 1 billion USD each. They represented 63.3 percent of the total. Industrial and processing products held a lion’s share of 88.5 percent.

Four products posted import turnover of more than 1 billion USD each, together they represented 46.8 percent of the total. Input materials accounted for the largest share of the total imports, or 93.7 percent year on year.

The US remained the biggest export market of Vietnam in January, buying an estimated amount of 9 billion USD of Vietnamese goods.

China was Vietnam’s biggest source of imports, shipping 10.2 billion USD worth of goods to the Southeast Asian country.

In January, Vietnam enjoyed a trade surplus of 2.1 billion USD with the European Union./.