Vietnam firms take advantage of euro fall to boost imports

Vietnamese enterprises have been boosting imports of equipment from European markets to take advantage of the weakening euro triggered by the current debt crisis in the EU, according to John Pearson, managing director of DHL Express for the Asia-Pacific region, Vietnam News Brief reported.

The increasing imports from the European markets have helped to raise DHL-VNPT's parcel volumes by 30 percent in the first months of this year, John Pearson said, forecasting that the volumes will continue growing for the rest of 2010.

Euro depreciation has been hurting Vietnamese exporters, partly slowing down the Southeast Asian nation's export growth as the EU is the second largest importer of Vietnamese goods.

There has been no official report on how much the EU debt crisis affects Vietnamese exporters, but Luca Silipo, chief economist for Asia Pacific region of Natixis bank, said it may drag Vietnam's economic growth down 1.7 percent in 2010.

Apparel, footwear, woodwork products, unripened coffee and seafood are Vietnam's export staples to the EU while its main imports are machinery, medicines, apparel accessories, steel and fertilizers.

The two-way trade fell 6.67 percent from a year earlier to US$15.2 billion in 2009 due to the global economic slowdown.
(Source:www.cargonewsasia.com)