Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam could earn about 239 billionUSD in export revenue in 2018, up 10 – 12 percent from last year, analystssaid, thanks to the favourable domestic and international economic context.

They said three quarters of 2018 have passedwith positive export outcomes, creating momentum for the country to record atrade surplus for the year. Notably, the number of goods orders often risesstrongly in the last months of the year, so overseas shipments are likely tohit a new record.

According to the Department of Export and Importunder the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), export turnover betweenJanuary and September reached 178.91 billion USD, up 15.4 percent year on year.

The domestic sector shipped 51.07 billion USDworth of goods abroad while foreign-invested firms contributed 127.84 billionUSD to the total exports.

Twenty-six commodities recorded export revenueof more than 1 billion USD in the period, and five of them had exports topping10 billion USD, including phones and accessories (36.1 billion USD), textilesand garments (22.6 billion USD), and electronic products, computers andcomponents (21.6 billion USD).

Meanwhile, Vietnam imported 173.52 billion USDworth of goods in the period, up 11.8 percent from a year earlier. Thatincluded 69.34 billion USD by domestic businesses and 104.18 billion USD byforeign firms.

Three of the 30 commodities with import revenue inexcess of 1 billion USD recorded turnover above 10 billion USD, statistics showed.

As a result, the country enjoyed a trade surplusof 5.39 billion USD. While the domestic sector had a deficit of 18.26 billionUSD, the foreign invested sector posted a surplus of 23.62 billion USD.

Regarding the exports in the remainder of theyear, Duong Duy Hung, Director of the MoIT’s Department of Planning, said theUS-China trade friction has yet to harm Vietnam’s export growth over the pastmonths. However, in the long term, political and trade tensions among bigeconomies pose major challenges to exports.

Officials said three months is not a longperiod, so the MoIT will monitor the world situation, especially the US-Chinatrade war, to take measures to promote exports and prevent trade fraud.

Trade promotion needs to be reformed to focus onlong-term programmes promoting certain commodities and markets until concreteoutcomes are gained, instead of just year-long campaigns.

Experts also said the MoIT should connect Vietnameseexporters of agricultural and fishery products with Chinese importers to boostcross-border shipments, especially of the goods Vietnam is strong at and Chinahas high demand for like fruit, aquatic products, rice and coffee.-VNA