Vietnam trade deficit grows to $4.7 billion

Vietnam's trade deficit grew to 4.78 billion dollars in the first half of 2007 as it earned less from oil and rice exports and paid more for raw material and machinery imports, officials said Monday.
For the first six months, exports grew 19.4 percent year-on-year to 22.45 billion dollars, but imports went up a steeper 30.4 percent to 27.23 billion dollars, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in a preliminary report.
For the month of June alone, Vietnam booked an estimated trade deficit of 950 million dollars, with 4.10 billion dollars in exports against imports that cost the communist-ruled nation 5.05 billion dollars.
The GSO also released revised figures for the January-May period, when exports reached 18.35 billion dollars and imports 22.18 billion dollars. No separate revised figures for May were available.
In the six-month period, Vietnam - a low-income but booming economy where the gross domestic product expanded 8.2 percent last year - spent 2.15 billion dollars on steel imports, up by 60.9 percent on the same six months last year.
"Demands for steel in Vietnam remained high," said a GSO official, who asked not to be named. "The situation won't improve any time soon as Vietnam is in the process of developing its infrastructure."
Vietnam's year-on-year imports of machinery and equipment went up by 46.5 percent to 4.39 billion dollars, while fertiliser imports cost the rice-growing country 423 million dollars, an increase of 24 percent.
In exports, the low-wage nation earned 3.43 billion dollars from garment and textile exports, up 25.9 percent. Coffee earned the world's second largest exporter of the commodity 1.21 billion dollars, up 108.9 percent. Vietnam, the world's number two rice exporter, earned less money from selling the grain, down by 5.6 percent to 731 million dollars.
Between January and June, the Southeast Asian nation - which has sizeable offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea but lacks operating refineries - saw crude oil export revenues fall 10.1 percent to 3.75 billion dollars.
Vietnam, which joined the World Trade Organisation in January, boosting foreign investment, saw industrial production rise to 17.23 billion dollars, up by 16.9 percent year-on-year, said the GSO.
The non-state sector reported an increase of 20.5 percent, followed by the foreign invested sector with 19.3 percent. The state-owned sector recorded an 8.5 percent increase in output.