Wood exports set to climb this year
Vietnam's wood industry is expected to gain a total export value of wood and wooden products of US$7.7 billion for this year, higher than US$7.1 billion in 2015.
According to the Vietnam Wood and Forestry Products Association (Viforest), exports of wood and forestry products from Vietnam will have the advantage of starting operations through the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal.
Local enterprises have done good business with ASEAN partners for many years so the AEC will create favourable conditions for them to develop further business incoming time.
Meanwhile, TPP will also usher in opportunities for the domestic wooden product makers to have more legal wooden material for export processing because the TPP member countries have great potential for high quality wooden materials with legal origins, according to Nguyen Ton Quyen, chairman of Viforest.
That will create more opportunities for Vietnamese manufacturers to export their products to the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) where there is a high demand for licensed wooden products.
In 2015, the country achieved total export value of wooden and forestry products at US$7.1 billion, 8% higher than 2014, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The three largest export markets of Vietnamese wooden products are the US, Japan and China, accounting for 67% of the total export value.
Last year, there were many export markets of Vietnamese wooden products with high export value such as India with a growth rate at 64.45%, Hong Kong with rate at 41.95%, the US at 17.8% and Germany at 10%.
Quyen said the export value increase was due to high demand in the world market in 2015, the Thoi bao Kinh doanh newspaper reported.
For instance, the US market needs to import wooden products worth US$27 billion per year while the country exported wooden products between US$1 billion and US$2 billion per year.
The EU market has a demand for wooden products worth US$85 billion but the nation's export value to the EU reaches only between US$700 million and US$800 million per year.
Moreover, the country's wooden products had high competitive ability and a reputation on the world market. Therefore, Vietnamese enterprises would have numerous opportunities to export their wooden products to those markets, he said.