With a trade deficit in October alone of nearly 500 million USD, the nation swung to an overall deficit in the first ten months of this year of 357 million USD – erasing a trade surplus of 143 million USD as of late September, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Total trade value in the first 10 months of the year reached 187.25 billion USD, of which exports accounted for 93.45 billion USD, an increase of 18.4 percent over the same period last year. Imports totalled 93.8 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 6.8 percent. Foreign-invested enterprises represented over half of the export value during the period, with a combined export value of nearly 51.6 billion USD.

In October alone, the nation's total trade value reached 20.3 billion USD. Exports of textiles and garments saw the largest value, reaching 1.4 billion USD, closely followed by mobile phones and components, totalling 1.3 billion USD.

The nation now has 22 categories of goods with export values in excess of 1 billion USD so far in 2012, including textiles and garments (12.53 billion USD); mobile phones and components (nearly 10 billion USD); crude oil (over 7 billion USD); and computer and electronic products and components (over 6 billion USD).-VNA