Vietnam Earns $1.34B from Precious Stones, Metals Exports in H1
Vietnam is estimated to have earned $1.343 billion from exports of precious stones and metals since early 2010, including $350 million in June versus $884 million in May, state media reported, citing a government data.
With gold prices standing at $1,200 an ounce on average, the six-month export revenues were equal to 36 tons of gold.
Resuming gold exports is expected to bring in a large volume of U.S. dollars to Vietnam and help narrow the country’s trade deficit, said Huynh Trung Khanh, senior advisor of the World Gold Council in Vietnam.
Khanh noted that between 300 tons and 400 tons of gold are currently kept by residents and banks in Vietnam, including 7-8 tons of gold imported in the first months of this year.
As the State Bank of Vietnam currently disallows exports of gold bars, local firms have sold abroad gold under raw jewelries, mainly to the European market. Firms in EU market will then re-process these raw jewelries into gold bars.
Local enterprises often boost exports of gold jewelries when domestic gold prices are much lower than the world level.
Gold has dropped to around VND28.4 million per tael in Vietnam early this morning amid a slight fall on the world market.
Domestic market was very quite with unclear sentiment and low trading volume. (VnEconomy Jun 24)
Vietnamese
