HANOI, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam spent over 32.5 billion U.S. dollars importing goods in the first two months of 2018, seeing a year-on-year rise of 15.3 percent, and a trade surplus of nearly 1.1 billion dollars, the country's General Statistics Office said on Thursday.
Specifically, domestic sector made import turnovers of over 13.3 billion dollars, up 16.4 percent, and foreign-invested sector posted import turnovers of 19.2 billion dollars, up 14.5 percent.
Between January and February, Vietnam's import turnovers of electronic products, computers and components surged 32.1 percent to 6.3 billion dollars; machines, equipment, tools and spare parts rose 6.2 percent to 4.9 billion dollars; phones and components increased 29.9 percent to 2.3 billion dollars; and cloth climbed up 29.3 percent to 1.7 billion dollars.
Regarding markets, China was Vietnam's biggest import market with turnovers of 9.4 billion dollars in the two-month period, up 24.4 percent, tailed by South Korea with 7 billion dollars, the ASEAN with 4.4 billion dollars, Japan with 2.5 billion dollars, the European Union with 1.8 billion dollars, and the United States with 1.4 billion dollars, said the office.
In 2017, Vietnam's total import turnovers stood at 211.1 billion dollars, and its export turnovers reached 214 billion dollars, creating a trade surplus of 2.9 billion dollars, according to the latest statistics released by the office on Monday.
