The country faced an estimated trade deficit of 150 million USD in August after enjoying a trade surplus in two consecutive months, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
In the month, total export turnover was estimated to stand at 9.8 billion USD, down 3.8 percent from 10 billion USD in July. Items earning 1 billion USD in the period included apparels, with 1.45 billion USD and telephones of various types and their components, with 1.15 billion USD.
The country’s import value of 9.95 billion USD, which was up 3.5 percent from July, saw 1.5 billion USD going to the purchase of machineries, equipments and other spare parts and 1.2 billion USD to computers, electronics products and components. In the first eight months of the year, the country’s export turnover reached 73.351 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 17.8 percent.
Apparels still topped 16 groups of commodities earning over 1 billion USD in export value, with 9.72 billion USD. It was followed by telephones and component, with 7.355 billion USD, and crude oil, with 5.542 billion USD. Meanwhile, import value in the reviewed period was 73.413 billion USD, up 6.7 percent year on year. These figures brought in an estimated trade deficit of 62 million USD in the January-August period although a trade surplus of 88 million USD was recorded in the January-July period.-VNA
