News
The eastern-most nation on Southeast Asia’s Indochina Peninsula, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam shipped an estimated US$276 billion worth of goods around the globe in 2017. That dollar amount reflects an 83.7% gain since 2014 and a 29% improvement from 2017 to 2018.
Based on estimates from the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, Vietnam’s exported goods plus services represent 100% of total Vietnamese economic output or Gross Domestic Product. Please note that the overall value of exported goods and services includes a sizable share of re-exporting activity. The analysis below focuses on exported products only.
Data from 2017 shows that 71.5% of products exported from Vietnam were bought by importers in: United States (19.5% of the global total), China (16.6%), Japan (7.9%), South Korea (6.9%), Hong Kong (3.5%), Netherlands (3.3%), Germany (3%), United Kingdom (2.5%), United Arab Emirates (2.4%), Thailand (2.2%), Malaysia (2%) and India (1.8%).
From a continental perspective, 52.8% of Vietnam exports by value were delivered to Asian countries while 21.8% were sold to North American importers. Vietnam shipped another 19.2% worth of goods to Europe. Smaller percentages went to Latin America excluding Mexico but including the Caribbean (2.4%), Oceania led by Australia (1.8%) then Africa (1.1%).
Given Vietnam’s population of 97 million people, its total $276 billion in 2018 exports translates to roughly $2,900 for every resident in the Southeast Asian nation.
Vietnam’s unemployment rate was 2.17% at March 2019 down from 3.23% during 2018, according to Trading Economics.
The following export product groups represent the highest dollar value in Vietnamese global shipments during 2018. Also shown is the percentage share each export category represents in terms of overall exports from Vietnam.
Electrical machinery, equipment: US$107.8 billion (39% of total exports)
Footwear: $21.8 billion (7.9%)
Clothing, accessories (not knit or crochet): $15.7 billion (5.7%)
Machinery including computers: $15.1 billion (5.5%)
Knit or crochet clothing, accessories: $14.6 billion (5.3%)
Furniture, bedding, lighting, signs, prefab buildings: $9.7 billion (3.5%)
Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $6.2 billion (2.2%)
Fish: $5.5 billion (2%)
Plastics, plastic articles: $4.1 billion (1.5%)
Leather/animal gut articles: $4.1 billion (1.5%)
Vietnam’s top 10 exports accounted for almost three-quarters (74.1%) of the overall value of its global shipments.
Furniture, bedding, lighting, signs and prefabricated buildings was the fastest-growing among the top 10 export categories, up by 46.7% year over year since 2017.
In second place for improving export sales was electrical machinery and equipment which was up by 43.7%.
Vietnam’s shipments of footwear posted the third-fastest gain in value up by 43.5% year over year.
The leading decliner among the top 10 Vietnam export categories was optical, technical, medical apparatus: which fell -16.9%
From the more granular four-digit Harmonized Tariff System code level, phone system devices including smartphones represent Vietnam’s most valuable exported product at 21.3% of the country’s total. In second place was integrated circuits and microassemblies (5.6%) trailed by textile footwear (3.8%), TV, radio or radar device parts (3.2%), leather footwear (2.3%), miscellaneous furniture (2.2%), printing machinery (1.8%) insulated wire or cable (1.6%), knit or crochet jerseys and pullovers (1.5%) then rubber or plastic footwear (1.4%).
