In recent years, Vietnam's economy has made strong gains in the context of a complicated economic and political situation globally.

Vietnam has been step by step implementing the foreign policy of multilateralization, taking advantage of the trade cooperation, investment, integration and technology transfer opportunities for the national economic development.

Vietnam has made big leaps, especially in recent years, in boosting import/export. The total import/export turnover in the last 20 years, 2000-2019 reached $3.995 trillion.

In 2001, Vietnam’s total import/export turnover was modest, just $30 billion. After six years, in 2017, the figure rose to $100 billion, after Vietnam officially became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In recent years, Vietnam's economy has made strong gains in the context of a complicated economic and political situation globally.

Four years later, in 2011, the total import/export turnover increased by two folds to $200 billion. In 2015, the figure hit $300 billion.

Just two years after that, in mid-December 2017, the total import/export turnover hit $400 billion. And turnover hit $500 billion as of mid-December 2019.

Thanks to this, Vietnam’s position in import and export as per WTO’s ranking has improved significantly.

In 2006, Vietnam ranked 50th in the world in exports and 44th in imports. In 2018, it ranked 26th in exports and 23rd in imports.

With the results, Vietnam is among the top 30 countries and territories with the highest import/export value. In ASEAN, Vietnam ranks third in import/export, just after Singapore and Thailand.

After a long period of witnessing a trade deficit, Vietnam has continuously had a trade surplus in recent years.

In 2011 and earlier years, Vietnam's trade balance of goods was always in a deficit, with the deficit of billions of dollars, peaking at $18.02 billion in 2008.

However, from 2012 to now, the trade balance has reversed with trade surplus seen more regularly, except 2015 which had the trade deficit of $3.55 billion.

In 2018, the trade surplus hit $6.83 billion and in the first 11 months of 2019, with the sharp increase in exports, the trade surplus reached $10.94 billion.

In the first 11 months of 2019, the total import/export value of the foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) reached $297.87 billion, up by 3.2 percent compared with the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the import/export turnover of Vietnamese enterprises during the same time increased by 15.1 percent. This was the third time they obtained the growth rate of over 10 percent.

Linh Ha 

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