
(Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam’s export of wood andwood-based products is projected to reach 8.85 billion USD in 2018, up over 1billion USD from the 2017 record of 7.7 billion USD.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade made the forecast basedon strong growth of the sector in the past 10 month.
Timber and wood products earned the country over 7.22billion USD between January and October, increasing 15.6 percent against thesame period last year.
Importing nearly 3.12 billion USD worth of Vietnamese woodand wood-based products, the United States was Vietnam's biggest export marketin the period.
Also between January and October, Vietnam spent nearly 1.9billion USD importing wood and woodwork products, translating into a tradesurplus of over 5.35 billion USD, an annual increase of nearly 1 billion USD.
Trade surplus of timber goods was ranked second among keyVietnamese agricultural exports during the period, only behind that of aquaticproducts, which recorded over 5.8 billion USD.
In October alone, export value of wood and wood productsstood at 845.4 million USD, up 25.3 percent year-on-year, with the US aloneaccounting for 389 million USD, followed by Japan (104.45 million USD), China(115.14 million USD) and the Republic of Korea (86.53 million USD). All of themposted increases ranging from 10 to 40 percent compared to the same period lastyear.
Nguyen Ton Quyen, General Secretary of the Association ofVietnam Timber and Forest Product, said the last three months of a year arealways the peak time for forestry exports.
He unveiled that almost all enterprises in the sector havenow secured enough export orders for the rest of the year, mostly from the US,EU, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and China.-VNA