Amid complicated developments of Covid-19 in the world, trade and investment decline, importing countries are increasingly tightening non-tariff barriers, increasing domestic protection, Vietnam’s import-export turnover for the whole 2020 still reached USD 543.9 billion, increased by 5.1% compared to 2019.

This number puts Vietnam 22nd in the world in terms of export turnover and capacity, and 26th in terms of international trade. Along with that, Vietnam continues to maintain the trade balance, recording a trade surplus for 5 consecutive years. This is a very encouraging result in the context of complicated developments in Covid-19 that negatively affect the world economy as well as Vietnam throughout 2020.

Data from the General Statistics Office shows that, in 2020, most countries' exports have decreased, but Vietnam's exports still keep the growth rate with exports reaching USD 281.5 billion, increased by 6.5% compared to 2019.

Along with that, the structure of export goods continued to improve in a positive direction, reducing the content of raw exports, increasing the export of processed products and industrial products.

This is completely in line with the roadmap for implementing the Commodity import-export strategy for the 2011-2020 period, with a vision to 2030, creating conditions for Vietnamese goods to participate more deeply in global production and supply chains.

Notably, trade surplus recorded a record USD 19.1 billion. The surplus in 2020 is higher than the surplus in 2019 (USD 10.87 billion), higher than the surplus in 2018 (USD 6.83 billion), 9 times higher than the surplus in 2017 (USD 2.11 billion) and nearly 11 times higher than 2016 surplus (USD 1.78 billion).

According to analysis from experts, going back to 9 years ago, in 2011, when Vietnam started to implement the the “Commodity import-export strategy for the 2011-2020 period, with a vision to 2030”, Vietnam still has a trade deficit of nearly USD 10 billion USD of goods and for many years before that, trade deficit was always present in the economy.

This is an evidence that, in order to have an impressive trade surplus in the past 5 years with a steadily increasing surplus over the years, Vietnam has had the right strategy on import and export, attracting domestic investment. In addition, administrative reform and business environment improvement have been conducted.

Mr. Pham Tat Thang, a senior trade expert, pointed out that, in addition to taking advantages of traditional markets, Vietnam has recently expanded to seek and develop more new markets from taking advantage of tariff preferences from Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

This helps domestic enterprises increase their competitiveness and increase the value of export goods, especially agricultural and aquatic products, which are Vietnam's advantages.

In particular, along with the continuous reform of administrative procedures, the creation of an open corridor for businesses has been creating a great driving force in developing export enterprises as well as attracting investment expansion.

In addition, the restructuring of the export composition has shown positive signs, when the export of domestic enterprises has a high growth rate exceeding that of the foreign invested enterprise sector.

In the context that exports of many countries continue to decline or slow down, but Vietnam's export turnover still grows positively and maintains a continuous trade surplus, it has confirmed the great efforts of the whole economy.

Kylie Nguyen