Vietnam earns $7.7bn from cellphone exports in first 4 months

 The country raked in $12.2 billion in total export revenue in April alone, seeing an increase of 23.2 percent ($2.3 billion) compared to the same period last year, Dau Tu (Investment) newspaper reported last week, quoting GSO figures.

In the first four months of this year, Vietnam’s exports earned around $45.7 billion, up 16.9 percent ($6.6 billion) year on year. The FDI sector gained $30.4 billion in export revenue, a year-on-year increase of 17.2 percent ($4.5 billion).

The GSO statistics also show that assembled products were the main revenue generator in the January-April period. Accordingly, exports of mobile phones and spare parts earned $7.7 billion, up 29.2 percent ($1.7 billion); garment and textile shipments hit $5.9 billion, a 20 percent rise; and footwear topped $2.9 billion, surging by 21.9 percent ($511.2 million).

Vietnam saw strong mobile phone export revenues thanks to Samsung’s two manufacturing plants located in the northern province of Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen, Dau Tu said.

The country’s traditional exports also posted high earnings in the same period as seafood collected some $2.2 billion, up 32 percent; coffee earned $1.6 billion, an increase of 29.5 percent; and wood and wooden products generated $1.9 billion, a 22.4 percent expansion.

Vietnam’s imports reached $12.6 billion in April and $45.1 billion in the first four months of this year, up 13.7 percent over the same period last year. The FDI sector contributed $26.3 billion, up 18.2 percent compared to same period last year.

Vietnam ran a $400 million trade deficit in April and thus posted a trade surplus of $683 million in the first four months.

Last year mobile phones surpassed textiles to become the export commodity to earn the most for Vietnam, for which Samsung Electronics Vietnam was largely responsible.

In 2013, Vietnam exported as much as $21.5 billion worth of mobile phones and spare parts, while the export value of textiles, traditionally the export staple of the country, topped $17.8 billion, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

According to Tran Duy Dong, deputy chief of the Agency for Economic Management under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Vietnam has emerged as the main manufacturing destination for Korean smartphone maker Samsung when it accounts for 70 percent of the modern handsets sold globally.