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According to preliminary statistics from the General Department of Customs, one of Vietnam’s emerging products earned hundreds of millions of USD in January, the raw plastic material. Specifically, in January, our country earned over 268 million USD from exporting 254,683 tons of plastic, increased by 33.8% in quantity and 33.9% in value compared to the previous month. Compared to the same period in 2023, this item witnessed a growth rate of 114.4% in quantity and 91.3% in value.
In terms of the market, the 3 countries that import the most plastic from Vietnam are Indonesia, China, and India.
Specifically, in January 2024, plastic exports to Indonesia reached 64,476 tons with a value of over 67.8 million USD, accounting for 25%.
For China, plastic exports in the first month of the year reached 43,591 tons and earned over 36.6 million USD. In addition, our country exported 19,134 tons to India and earned over 20.1 million USD.
In 2023, Vietnam earned over 2.1 billion USD from exporting this item, a decrease of 6.1% in value compared to 2022.
Plastic, also known as plastic or polymer, is an important material used to produce many types of objects, serving human life as well as serving the development of many industries and economic sectors such as electricity, electronics, telecommunications, transportation, aquatic products, agriculture, etc.
Currently, Vietnam can produce materials such as PVC, PP, PET, PS, PE, with a total capacity of nearly 3 million tons/year. Domestic raw materials can meet 30% of the domestic market demand, the remaining 70% is imported from countries around the world such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, the United States, China, Taiwan (China), Malaysia, Singapore…
Along with the development of science and technology, plastic is also applied and becomes a substitute material for traditional materials that seem impossible to replace such as wood, metal, silicate,… Therefore, the plastics industry plays an increasingly important role in the life and production of countries.
According to reports from the Vietnam Plastics Association, the growth rate of the plastic industry in the past 5 years has been maintained at around 12 – 15%/year. The total revenue of the plastics industry has reached over 25 billion USD. At present, Vietnamese plastic products have been exported to more than 160 countries around the world, present in difficult markets such as the United States, Japan, Australia, the European Union community countries such as Germany, France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain…
The export value of plastics has grown steadily through the years, from 3 billion USD in 2018 to 5.5 billion USD in 2022, with an average annual growth rate of 12 – 20%. In general, the Vietnamese plastics industry has nearly 4,000 businesses nationwide, of which 90% are small and medium-sized enterprises, mainly concentrated in the southern region.
The main export products are packaging, sheets, flakes, plastic film; products used in packaging and transportation, household plastics, decorative items, tarpaulin fabric.
The biggest hope of the Vietnamese plastics industry now is trade agreements, especially the effectiveness of the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), the import tariffs on most plastic products exported to the EU market have been removed. This is a great advantage to increase the export volume of the Vietnamese plastics industry to this important market.
