Firms confront decline in export values
Firms confront decline in export values
Viet Nam had a year-on-year increase of 24.1 per cent in export value for the first five months to US$42.9 billion, according to the General Statistics Office.
The growth rate in export value was a positive sign in terms of the world economic crisis and economic difficulties in key export markets of Viet Nam, including the US, the EU and Japan.
However, during the first five months, foreign direct investment (FDI) firms accounted for 60.8 per cent of the total export value in Viet Nam.
The FDI firms gained a year-on-year surge of 36.9 per cent to $26.1 billion while the domestic firms saw a year-on-year increase of 8.4 per cent to $16.8 billion in the first five months.
Vo Tri Thanh, deputy head of the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM), said in general, the national export value was a bright point for the economic crisis but the export value of domestic firms was low, with no growth in the first quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, FDI firms had many advantages in exports, including the cheap capital from parent companies, trademarks and a stable consumption market. Therefore, they did not face as severe an impact from the world economic crisis as the domestic firms, Thanh said.
Export statistics figures showed export values made by FDI firms to be much higher than domestic firms' export values. The reason for this was that the FDI firms had large export markets and customers while domestic firms' export contracts relied on foreign partners' signing of contracts.
High input prices and difficulties in the world market were challenges for domestic exporters, said economist Le Dang Doanh.
Pham Xuan Hong, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas), said the domestic exporters of the textile and apparel industry had difficulty in getting export orders, which were reduced by 5-10 per cent against the same period of last year.
Meanwhile, they found it hard to get loans even though lending interest rates fell to 15 per cent per year, Hong said.
The seafood exporters did neither have any new export markets and even some difficulty exporting to their traditional markets, said Truong Dinh Hoe, general secretary of the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
Long-term domestic exporters should improve in quality and added value of export products to increase their competitive edge. Not focusing on the competitiveness in export prices was also recommended due to anti-dumping price policies and technical barriers, said Thanh
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