Exports of timber and forestry products will reach the turnover of US$ 15 billion

According to the Vietnam Customs, exports of timber and forestry products are recovering fairly strong. The October’s export turnover of timber and forestry products reached US$ 951 million.

Even the turnover has not recovered to the US$ 1 billion each month mark as of the beginning months this year, and still far behind the US$ 1.283 billion turnover of October last year, the exports of timber and forestry products have a strong growth when compared to September 2021, with the growth of 35.6%.

Due to the strong recovery in October, in the first 10 months of 2021, the export of timber and forestry products reached US$ 12.085 billion, up 23.4% over the same period in 2020.

In the first half of November, the export value of timber and forestry products reached US$ 585 million, up sharply from US$ 397 million in the first half of October. More importantly, in the first half of November it reached nearly US$ 600 million, the whole month's exports will surely return to the US$ 1 billion USD mark from July 2021 to present.

With that recovery momentum, in December, the exports of timber and forestry products might completely continue at the mark of more than US$ 1 billion. Thus, the exports of timber and forestry products for the whole year will surely reach more than US$ 14 billion, even reach the target of US$ 14.5 billion USD as set out at the beginning of the year.

The import demand for timber and forestry products on the world market is increasing in the last months of the year, especially the US market. This is the time to increase the exports of timber and forestry products, especially wooden furniture to the US, to serve the demand for shopping and consuming during the big holidays at the end of the year in this market.

According to experts of the wood industry, entering the period of recovery and development after the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnam's wood industry has many opportunities for high export growth in the long term. In which, there is an important factor of demand in the world market.

At the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, the wave of restructuring wood exports in the direction of increasing the export proportion of value added products, reducing the export proportion of low value wood materials is expected to increase very strongly.

The fact that wood processing enterprises are continuing to restore production capacity will also make a very important contribution to the wood industry to continue to accelerate exports in the last months of the year.

By the end of October, wood enterprises in Binh Duong province had operating capacity of about 50 - 55%, by the end of November it increased to about 60 - 65%, and is expected to reach about 70 - 75% by the end of December and will be above 80% by the end of February 2022, said Mr. Nguyen Liem - Vice Chairman of the Binh Duong Furniture Association (BIFA).

It is worth noting that not only the exports of timber and forestry products, the export of many non-timber forestry products also experienced impressive growth this year. Statistics from the Vietnam Customs show that, in the first 10 months of 2021, the exports of rattan, bamboo, sedge and carpet had reached US$ 700 million, up 44.4% over the same period last year.

Before that, the record of export turnover of rattan, bamboo, sedge and carpet was US$ 611 million that was achieved in 2020. Thus, the export of the first 10 months of this year not only broke the previous record, but also brought the the group of rattan, bamboo, sedge and carpet products hit the US$ 700 million mark for the first time. With the export value achieved in each month at about US$ 70 million, the export of rattan, bamboo, sedge and carpet for the whole year can completely surpass the US$ 800 million mark for the first time.

Thus, with the strong recovery of wood exports in the last months of the year, the impressive growth of rattan, bamboo, sedge and carpet products, plus other forestry products, exports of timber and non-timber forestry products, it is possible to reach over US$ 15 billion in turnover this year.