HANOI, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam set targets to earn 6 billion U.S. dollars from the exports to Latin American countries by 2015, and 12-15 billion U.S. dollars by 2020, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT) on Wednesday.
The targets were set upon the increasing demand on goods, machines, equipment and spare parts in service of local production and consumption in the newly emerging countries, said MIT.
In 2011, Vietnam's ten groups of exports to Latin American countries earned high trade value. They included foot wear, worth 630.8 million U.S. dollars, accounting for one-fourth of Vietnam' s total export value to this region; sea food with 253.8 million U. S. dollars (10.4 percent); textiles with over 185.9 million U.S. dollars, among other exports such as leather hand bags, plastic and rubber products, and coffee.
Ten leading Latin American countries imported most Vietnamese goods, including Brazil (597.7 million U.S. dollars), Mexico (589. 7 million U.S. dollars), Cuba (270 million U.S. dollars), Panama ( 227.4 million U.S. dollars), Argentina (148.8 million U.S. dollars) , Chile (118.1 million U.S. dollars), Columbia (106 million U.S. dollars), Peru (75 million U.S. dollars), Ecuador (59 million U.S. dollars), and Venezuela (26.9 million U.S. dollars).
However, Vietnam's market share in Latin America is still small, accounting for only 0.18 percent of the region's total import value (2.4 billion U.S. dollars out of 1,021 billion U.S. dollars).
To reach the set targets, beside promoting more exports to the above-mentioned 10 traditional markets, MIT plans to expand 23 more markets, which currently account for 8.4 percent of Vietnam' s total exports to the entire region (with about 204.4 million U.S. dollars) by holding more business promotion events to provide update information of the Vietnamese businesses and export goods to local partners, reported MIT.
