Mobile phone exports target US$20 billion
(VOV) - Mobile phone and spare parts are likely to top the list of Vietnamese export items for the first time, with their export earnings expected to hit US$20 billion in 2013.
Vietnam raked in US$13.07 billion from exporting these products in the first nine months of this year, and the US$20 billion target is within reach, according to experts.
Statistics show the export value of mobile phones and spare parts increased 21.45 times from 2009 to 2012, or 177.8% year on year on average.
In 2009, these products ranked 9th among the country’s top 10 export items behind garments, footwear, crude oil, seafood, electronics, computers and spare parts, wood and wood products, rice and rubber. One year later, they climbed to fourth place after garments, crude oil and footwear.
They were placed second behind garments in 2011 and 2012, but jumped to top in the first nine months of 2013.
Worthy of note is that foreign-invested businesses accounted for 99.2% of the total export value of mobile phones and spare parts.
The high export growth was attributed to the operation of phone handset manufacturing projects in Bac Ninh province, making Bac Ninh the country’s second largest hard currency earner (US$15.5 billion) after HCM City (US$20 billion) between January-September 2013.
The European Union was the largest importer of Vietnamese mobile phones and spare parts, consuming US$5.4 billion in the past nine months, a year-on-year increase of 71%. It was followed by the United Arab Emirates (US$2.27 billion and up 156%), India (US$642 million and up 163%), Hong Kong (US$554 million and up 63.5%), and Russia (US$525 million and up 18.8%).