Figures from general Department of Vietnam Customs showed that in June, Vietnam’s total export turnover reaped $9.89 billion, rising 2 percent from the previous month while the import value was $9.53 billion, down 6.8 percent month on month.

Thus, in June, the country returned to enjoy a trade surplus of $360 million after trade deficit in the previous two months. This trade surplus was mainly thanks to FDI firms when this group posted a trade surplus of up to more than $380 million in month.

Totally, from early this year so far, the country has had four months of trade surplus.

Accumulatively, in Jan-Jun, the country’s total export turnover fetched $53.33 billion, rising 22.7 percent over the same period last year while the total import value was $53.49 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%.

Therefore, in Jan-Jun, the country posted a trade deficit of about $160 million, equaling to only 1/40 of the trade gap of the same period last year ($6.4 billion) and equivalent to 0.3 percent of the total export turnover.

Thus, the trade gap in Jan-Jun was quite far from the trade deficit forecast for the whole year set by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) at $5.5 billion, or 5 percent of the total export turnover.

Almost export staples reached high export turnover against the same period last year such as seafood, coffee and apparel products…of which, telephone and accessories export (mainly from Samsung Electronics Vietnam Co-SEV) posted the highest increase with total export turnover in Jan-Jun at $4.9 billion.

Vietnam’s trade deficit was still mainly from China with value of $6.9 billion in the first six months of this year, over 40 times against the country’s trade deficit.

Thus, export import activities in June and the first six months of this year were completely in contrast with previous estimate given by General Statistical Office (GSO) when it estimated the country’s trade deficit at about $150 million in June, lifting the total trade gap in Jan-Jun to $685 million, equaling to 10 percent of the same period last year.