Vietnam's export revenue in the first four months of the year surged 35.7 percent over the same period last year to reach 26.94 billion USD, the General Statistics Office estimated.

Exports in April reached 7.3 billion USD, roughly 1.4 billion USD lower than the previous month.

The office attributed the four- month figure to the high prices of many export staples, especially cassava that doubled in value against the same period last year, earning the country 515 million USD, in the first four months.

Garments and textiles were the country's largest earner in that time at nearly 3.93 billion USD , followed by crude oil at 2.46 billion USD .

However, coal and jewellery reportedly decreased by between 5-24.3 percent over the same period last year.

The country, meanwhile, spent 31.83 billion USD on imports, up 29.1 percent over the first four months of last year, pushing the national trade deficit to nearly 4.9 billion USD, up 6 percent over the same period last year.

Import value for machines and equipment topped more than 4.68 billion USD, followed by petroleum at 3.58 billion USD and textile fabric at 2.11 billion USD .

Imports of vegetables, animal feed and vehicles declined in value while liquefied gas, iron, steel and completed motorbikes saw a decrease in volume, the office reported.

In the first four months of this year, the export value of agricultural, forest and seafood products rose 43.3 percent year-on-year to 8.4 billion USD, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The export value surged by 65.1 percent to 5 billion USD for farming products, by 29.2 percent to 1.6 billion USD for seafood and by 48.1 percent to 1.2 billion USD for forestry products.

Nguyen Viet Chien, director of the ministry's Information and Statistics Centre, said inflation had caused an increase in the price of almost all these products.

Rice gained the largest export value in the first four months of this year, Chien said.

The export of rice had a year-on-year increase of 30 percent in volume to 2.8 million tonnes and 22.7 percent in value to 1.4 billion USD.

The largest export market for rice was Indonesia , followed by Cuba .

The ministry expects the total export volume of rice to reach about 7 million tonnes this year.

Coffee export price doubled that of the same period last year to 47-49 million VND (2,238-2,333 USD ) per tonne.

Exports reached 675,000 tonnes in volume and 1.4 billion USD in value for the first four months.

In the first four months, rubber exports doubled in value to 897 million USD and by 31.3 percent in volume to 204,000 tonnes.

Pepper export prices also had a record increase of 61.8 percent in the first four months to 4,895 USD per tonne.

The export value of pepper had a year-on-year increase of 3.5 percent to 208 million USD while the export volume declined by 4.9 percent to 42,000 tonnes.

Vietnam exported 39,000 tonnes of cashews, earning 275 million USD for the first four months. The exports declined by 14.6 percent in volume but surged by 15 percent in value against the same period last year./.