At the regular press conference for the second quarter of 2026 of the Ministry of Finance, representatives of the Statistics Department said that the total import and export turnover of goods in the first 5 months of the year reached 445.12 billion USD, an increase of 25% compared to the same period last year. In which, exports increased by 19.5%, while imports increased by 30.8%.
Notably, Vietnam's trade deficit is about 13.8 billion USD in this period. According to a representative of the Statistics Office, the main reason comes from the increase in imports of machinery and equipment serving production. This group of goods accounts for about 94% of total import turnover.
Representatives of the Statistics Office said that if businesses effectively use imported machinery and equipment to expand and improve domestic production capacity, this will be an important factor promoting economic growth from now until the end of the year.
Further clarifying this issue, Deputy Minister of Finance Nguyen Duc Chi said that trade deficit, trade surplus or total import and export turnover are all important macroeconomic indicators that need to be monitored and evaluated regularly.
According to Mr. Chi, the increase in total import and export turnover shows that the activities of the economy as well as the level of connectivity of Vietnam with the world economy are expanding. However, due to the higher import growth rate than exports, a trade deficit has arisen.
Leaders of the Ministry of Finance said that it is necessary to deeply analyze the structure of imported goods to properly assess the nature of this index. In which, the import turnover of gasoline and oil increased sharply due to increased demand from the economy, leading to a trade deficit of over 7 billion USD for this item.
In addition, components, raw materials and machinery and equipment recorded a significant trade deficit. These are all items serving investment, production expansion and preparation for production activities in the coming time.
According to Deputy Minister Nguyen Duc Chi, when considering the overall scale of import and export, the impact of gasoline and oil imports as well as the current import commodity structure, it can be seen that businesses are taking advantage of favorable market conditions to import raw materials, machinery, and equipment for production.
He also expressed his expectation that if trade conditions are more favorable, especially agreements related to taxes and trade with the United States and other partners are signed, businesses will have more conditions to use this imported goods effectively for production and export.
We have grounds to believe that the export turnover of the economy in the last months of 2026 will grow stronger, contributing to expanding the scale of import and export, gradually balancing the trade balance and towards a trade surplus," Deputy Minister Nguyen Duc Chi emphasized.
