The country's two largest cities recently posted opposing sets of results related to trade turnover achieved during the first eight months of this year.

While HCM City announced a trade surplus of 1.53 billion USD, the capital city reported a trade deficit of nearly 10 billion USD.

HCM City 's Statistics Office said that in August alone, the city's export value reached an estimated 2.5 billion USD, a month-on-month decline of 20.8 percent.

Export value of State-owned firms decreased by 25.3 percent while export turnover derived from foreign-invested firms saw a growth of 0.9 percent.

August figures revealed the total export value of the city having hit nearly 18.3 billion USD, a rise of 20.5 percent over the same period last year.

Import value during the same period managed over 16.7 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 24.5 percent.

The Hanoi statistic office reported the city's total import value in the January - August period declined by 18.1 percent over the same period last year to nearly 16.4 million USD.

While exports managed to increase by 27.2 percent, it was unable to help the city cut down its trade deficit as total export value reaching only 6.4 billion USD.

In August alone, Hanoi earned 982.5 million USD from exports while spending nearly 2 billion USD on imports./.