Wood exports set to climb this year
Tuesday, 08/03/2016 10:06
Vietnam's wood industry is
expected to gain a total export value of wood and wooden products of 7.7
billion USD for this year, higher than 7.1 billion USD 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, Vietnam achieved total export value of wooden and forestry products at
7.1 billion USD, 8 percent 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 percent 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 percent, Hong Kong
with rate at 41.95 percent, the US at 17.8 percent and Germany at 10 percent.
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 27 billion
USD per year while Vietnam exported wooden products between 1 billion USD and 2
billion USD per year. The EU market has a demand for wooden products worth 85
billion USD but Vietnam's export value to the EU reaches only between 700
million USD and 800 million USD per year.
Moreover, Vietnam'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.