The export value of wood products saw a year-on-year decline of 15.2 percent for the first eight months of this year to 1.55 billion USD but last month it increased by 10 million to 210 million USD from July.

The Vietnam Wood and Forest Products Processing Association said the economic situation in Vietnam ’s key wood export market was better than earlier this year.

So, it expected Vietnamese wood product exports would recover by the end of this year and the exports would be higher than the start of the year.

So far this year, the US was the largest export market of Vietnamese wood products with a total value of 566 million USD, 0.7 percent higher than the same period last year.

The European Union was the second largest export market for the sector with a total value of 283 million USD in the first seven months of this year, 39 percent lower than the same period last year.

This third largest export market of Vietnamese wood products was Japan with a total export value of 205 million USD in the first seven month of this year, 2 percent lower than the same period last year.

The association said wood product exporters needed support in tax policies to overcome difficulties.

Tran Quoc Manh, deputy head of the HCM City Fine Art Products and Wood Processing Association, said the export wood product processors faced many difficulties in the domestic market, where customers’ demands are different from those in overseas markets.

“If they could overcome them, the wood product processing industry would have a bright future,” he said./.