The services industry has achieved outstanding results in terms of exports considering it is still in its infancy in Vietnam , the General Department of Taxation says.

Vietnam 's services exports have been constantly rising, going up from 4.26 billion USD in 2005 to 7.46 billion USD last year.

Tourism remains the main export item. It was worth 2.3 million USD in 2005 and rose to 4.5 million USD last year, an increase of 14.11 percent a year on average, higher than the rate for overall services export.

Analysts attribute this to the large number of tourists arriving in Vietnam . In 2009, for example, there were around 5.049 million foreign arrivals.

Export of transport services, represented mainly by shipping, which were worth 1.16 million USD in 2005 doubled to 2.30 million USD last year.

Telecom services are the third major export, with revenues going up from 1.16 million USD in 2005 to almost 4.8 million USD in 2010. Vietnamese service providers like Viettel are active in foreign markets like Cambodia .

However, despite the successes achieved by these sectors, the services industry still suffered from many limitations and as a result could reach only 11 percent of the value of goods exports, the analysts said.

Most service providers lacked size, did not focus on exports, and were relatively inexperienced, they said./.