(Anova) - Vietnam’s exports may be hurt next year because of changes in international markets, including a recession in the US, local exporters said Wednesday.
According to data from the US International Trade Commission, Vietnam’s exports to the US, its biggest market, have already slowed this year.

Shipments to the US rose 20 percent from January to August from the same period a year earlier to US$8.04 billion, the US data showed. Growth was 21 percent in the January to July period and as high as 29 percent at the start of the year.

Vietnam may struggle to maintain past rates of export growth to the US as a global credit crunch pushes the US into recession. Last year, Vietnam made it into the list of the top 30 exporters to the US for the first time.

A national Nine Month Export Review conference held by the Ministry of Trade in Ho Chi Minh City Wednesday heard the outlook was for exports growth to slow or even contract because of reduced demand from international markets.

Pham Xuan Hong, deputy chairman of HCMC-based Association of Garment Textile Embroidery-Knitting, said sales of apparel in the US have been affected by the economic troubles plaguing the world’s largest economy. Garment exports have also been slowed by higher raw material costs and higher wages.

Hong said Vietnam’s textile industry would be hard-pressed to fulfill its goal of exporting $9.5 billion worth of goods this year and achieving the government’s target of export growth of 21 percent next year.

The industry earned $6.8 billion from exports in the first nine months, a 20 percent increase on the same period last year.

Hong said internal pressures from rising labor costs – with the minimum wage to rise in early 2009 – combined with high interest rates meant garment makers would have difficulty posting any profits at all.

Vietnam earned about $48.58 billion from exports in the first nine months of the year, a 39 percent increase on the same period last year, and spent about $64.1 billion in foreign currencies on imports during the period, a 47.6 percent year-on-year increase.

The difficulties facing the American economy “are only just beginning to be visible in Vietnam,” Thien Viet Securities, a Ho Chi Minh City-based brokerage, said in a report last week. “Companies with US export exposure will have to adjust down revenue expectations.”

Some Vietnamese companies have been struggling to raise money after the country’s central bank told lenders to limit their loan growth. The state bank has also increased interest rates three times this year to 14 percent, the highest in Asia, to curb inflation from as much as 28.3 percent.

Vietnam’s exports of crude oil to the US jumped 68 percent by value to $466 million in the first eight months of the year, according to US International Trade Commission figures. The average price of crude oil was 77 percent higher during the first eight months than the same period last year.

The US sent $1.95 billion of goods to Vietnam from January to August, an increase of 97 percent, as car shipments rose 128 percent to $230 million from $101 million.

Source: TN, Bloomberg

(ThanhNien News)