Vietnam-EU trade value increases 9 percent

Hanoi (VNA) – Trade value between Vietnam and the European Union (EU) in the first half of this year has gained a year-on-year growth of 9.05 percent to 21.2 billion USD.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s European Market Department, during the period, export value from Vietnam to the EU increased by 8.68 percent to 16.2 billion USD and import value to Vietnam from the EU surged by 10.28 percent to 5 billion USD.

Vietnam mainly exported traditional products to the EU, including textile, garment, footwear, and coffee, in addition to seafood and computer.

Vietnam especially started exporting telephone and its components to the EU in 2011, but the export value of those products in 2015 reached 9.7 billion USD and accounted for 75 percent of its total national export value to EU, it was reported on the ministry’s website on August 10.

In addition, some other products retained growth of between 5 percent and 10 percent per year in export value though they did not have large export value, including plastic products, wood and wooden products, handbag, suitcase, and umbrella, apart from pepper, and cashew.

In the first six months, Vietnam mainly imported from most of EU member countries products that the nation had not produced, or which they lacked, such as machines, equipment, tools and pharmaceutical products, in addition to milk and milk products.

Over the past years, the trade relationship between Vietnam and the EU has gained rapidly and developed efficiently. The bilateral trade value increased by 10 times from 4.1 billion USD in 2000 to 41.2 billion USD in 2015.

Of this, the export value from Vietnam to the EU surged 11 times from 2.8 billion USD to 30.8 billion USD while import value from the EU to Vietnam rose eight times from 1.3 billion USD to 10.4 billion USD.-VNA