Hanoi (VNA) - The US was Vietnam’s leading export market in the firstfive months of the year, with export turnover of 24.6 billion USD, an 8.2 percentincrease compared to last year.

Last year, the US had one of the highest export growth rates compared to Vietnam'sother export markets, with a 29.1 percent increase in export growth compared to2018, accounting for 23.2 percent of Vietnam’s total exports.

Vietnam's total export and import turnover in the first five months was 196.84billion USD, a 2.8 percent drop year-on-year, according to the General Statistics Office.

Total export turnover was 99.36 billion USD, a yearly drop of 1.7 percent,while imports reached 97.48 billion USD, down 4 percent year-on-year. 

COVID-19 has affected Vietnam’s main trading partners, hampering exports andimports, according to the office.

Vietnamese exports reached 16.3 billion USD in China, 8.1 billion USD in Japan,and 7.7 billion USD in the Republic of Korea.

In the five-month period, 17 product groups reached over 1 billion USD worth ofexport valuer each, including phones and components, electronics, garment andtextiles, machinery, footwear, and vehicles.

Those with declining turnover were telephones and components (9 percent),textiles (15 percent), footwear (5 percent), fruit and vegetables (10 percent),rubber (30 percent), and pepper (18 percent)./.