Exports up by 54 per cent in farm sector

During the period, key agricultural products such as rice, coffee and rubber accounted for $10.7 billion, up 49.3 per cent; seafood hit $4.4 billion, up 26.7 percent; and forestry products reached $3 billion, up 17 per cent.

In September alone, the country exported $2.4 billion  worth of produce, up $200 million against the previous month.

Director of the ministry's Information and Statistics Centre, Nguyen Viet Chien said a global price hike has helped to significantly lift turnover as the volume of many key export items has risen only slightly during the period.

Thanks to a price hike of more than 54 per cent, coffee exports earned $2.2 billion in the first nine months, up by 66.5 per cent over the same period last year, though shipments were up by only 8.9 per cent to 994,000 tonnes.

Rubber export turnover during the period also surged more than 61 percent to $2.3 billion, despite an export volume rise of only 3.3 per cent to 530,000 tonnes. Average rubber export prices during the period reached $1,520 per tonne.

Despite an export volume decrease of 7.8 percent to 129,000 tonnes, cashew valued at $1.1 billion , up 38.6 per cent.

With a shipment of 6.2 million tonnes, up 17.44 per cent, rice was the largest export earner of agricultural products with $3.1 billion, up 25.6 per cent in value.

Most Vietnamese rice was exported to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cuba , Senegal , Bangladesh and Ivory Coast , of which Indonesia for the first time surpassed the Philippines to become Vietnam's largest rice importer in the first nine months.

With an export turnover of $2.9 billion in the first nine months, up 17 per cent over the same period last year, woodwork products were the main contributor to the high rise in the country's forestry product export during the first nine months, the ministry said.

As demand for Vietnam's agricultural, forestry and seafood products is showing positive signs, the ministry forecast that the industry would exceed the export target of $23 billion  this year, up by $3.8 billion over last year.