Vietnam trade deficit drops: official figures

For the month of June alone, Vietnam booked an estimated trade deficit of $1.2 billion.

The country's trade deficit hit a record of $17 billion in 2008.

In the six-month period, Vietnam - a low-income but booming economy where the gross domestic product grew by 6.18 percent last year - spent $2.12 billion on steel imports, down more than half compared with the same period last year.

Vietnam's year-on-year imports of machinery and equipment were down by nearly a fifth to $5.34 billion, while fertiliser imports fell a third to $710 million.

The country earned $4.07 billion from exports of garments and textiles, and $1.09 billion from coffee, down by 12.2 percent.

Vietnam, the world's number two rice exporter, increased its exports of the grain by nearly a quarter to $1.8 billion.

Between January and June, the Southeast Asian nation - which has sizeable offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea - saw crude oil export revenues fall 41.5 percent to $3.3 billion.

During that period, Vietnam saw industrial production rise to $18.5 billion, up by 4.8 percent year-on-year, said the GSO.

The non-state sector reported an increase of 7.6 percent, followed by the foreign invested sector with 4.5 percent. The state-owned sector recorded only an 1.5 percent increase in output.

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