HANOI, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam spent nearly 6.8 billion U.S. dollars importing roughly 4.7 million tons of plastic in the first nine months of this year, posting respective year-on-year rises of 2 percent and 16.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the country poured nearly 4.8 billion U.S. dollars in importing plastic products, up 10.7 percent, according to the General Statistics Office on Thursday.
In the nine-month period, Vietnam's largest suppliers of plastic and plastics products included China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Thailand.
Between January and September, Vietnam gained over 2.5 billion U.S. dollars from exporting plastic products, posting a year-on-year surge of 13.9 percent.
In 2018, Vietnam imported roughly 5.6 million tons of plastic totaling 9.1 billion U.S. dollars, up 11.9 percent and up 20 percent, respectively. In 1990, each Vietnamese person consumed 3.8 kg of plastic, and in 2015, the figure surged to 41 kg of the product, according to the Vietnam Plastics Association.
According to Mordor Intelligence, an India-based market research firm, Vietnam's plastic market is likely to post a compounded annual growth rate of more than 6.6 percent in the 2018-2023 period.
Vietnam is making efforts to reduce plastic waste. The whole country is expected to ban single-use plastic products by 2025 and targets to sell no disposable plastics at supermarkets by 2021, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at a national anti-plastic waste campaign held in June. In another move, the Vietnamese government has also intensified a plan to phase out scrap plastic imports by 2025.
