Wood exports of $4.3b in sight
Wood exports of $4.3b in sight
The wood industry is showing signs of branching out after the chairman of the Viet Nam Timber and Forestry Product Association said wood exports would reach US$4.3 billion for this year, up $400 million on 2011.
Ton Quyen said the target shouldn't prove to be difficult as the required earnings of roughly $300 million each month would be normal for the last quarter of the year.
Industry insiders also forecast that exports would increase towards the end of the year thanks to rising demand in the world market.
Quyen said although the world woodwork market has shrunk 30 per cent, the domestic wood industry hasn't been significantly affected, adding that the remaining 70 per cent remained a great opportunity for Vietnamese businesses to tap. Moreover, local wood producers and exporters are not dependent on bank credit so they have not faced the same financial challenges of producers and exporters in other industries.
According to the General Statistics Office, turnover for wood exports hit nearly $3.4 billion in the first nine months of this year, representing a year-on-year rise of 20.2 per cent. The US, China and Japan were major importers of Vietnamese wood products during the period.
The country has roughly 4,000 wood producers and exporters besides 30,000 households also doing work related to the industry.
The Government has so far encouraged the development of wood product export as it exempts import tax on wood materials. The country imports roughly $1 billion worth of wood materials yearly.
Chairman of the Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of HCM City (Hawa) Nguyen Chien Thang said Viet Nam, which ranks sixth in the world for woodwork exports, would likely see wood exports grow by $15-20 billion in revenue in the next 10 – 15 years.
However, experts also urged the industry to restructure, saying that the industry's growth contained potentially unsustainable factors that could seriously impact future expansion.
vietnamnews
