Vietnam's iron and steel exports go through the roof

Vietnamese iron and steel exporters have been doing brisk business due to new large-scale free trade agreements

According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam’s exports of iron and steel reached $1.826 billion in the first quarter of 2021, up sharply by 65.2 per cent (equivalent to $720 million) on-year. Of these, the exports of crude steel and iron, as well as rolled steel increased by 14.4 and 54 per cent while that of steel angles decreased by 1.6 per cent.

Due to international economic integration, the implementation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement helped the Vietnamese steel and iron industry to boost production and exports to new markets in the forthcoming time.

Taking advantage of the promising opportunity, leading steel-producers like Hoa Phat Group (HPG) and Hoa Sen Group (HSG) have begun exporting large batches to potential markets in Europe and the Americas over the past three months.

Particularly, Hoa Phat Group, the sole enterprise in Vietnam to produce prestressed steel cable, delivered a lot of more than 2,000 tonnes of this speciality steel to partners in the United States in March, pursuant to contracts signed previously. Previously, Hoa Phat shipped more than 12,000 tonnes of mainly cold galvanised steel products to the Americas in February 2021.

Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, director of the WTO and International Trade Center under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, shared that Vietnamese steel companies need to familiarise themselves fully with international trade and focus on improving their competitiveness, product quality, and localisation rate to preclude the risk of lawsuits and trade remedies in export markets. Besides, the protection from the state also plays a key role for Vietnamese steel to stand firm in export markets against the challenges of trade defence in the upcoming time.