Indo-Vietnam Trade

Over the past five years there has been a steady increase in the trade volume between India and Vietnam. Finally, it crossed the US$1 billion mark in year 2006-2007. One decade ago, in
1994, the total trade was a meagre US$ 102.6 million. In the last five years there has been a
continuous growth in the bilateral trade. In 2005-06, the bilateral trade was US$ 822.06 million, it grew by 39.81 per cent and reached US$ 1,149.36 million in 2006-07. However, the noticeable fact is that despite the growth in bilateral trade volume, its share in India’s total trade remains insignificant. Over the past five years, the yearly percentage growth in total trade has increased from 0.32% to 0.37%. This indicates that although India-Vietnam trade is increasing, this increase is not exceptional in light of India’s overall trade growth. In 2003-04 India constituted around 1.6 per cent of Vietnam’s total export”2. Despite the increase in India’s share in Vietnamese trade, India still does not figure among the top ten trading partners of Vietnam.
An important highlight of the India-Vietnam trade is that the Balance of Trade (BoT)
has continuously been in favour of India.

Major items of India’s export to Vietnam include food ingredients, ordinary metals, plastic
materials, pharmaceuticals, steel of all kinds, leather and textile materials and pesticides. India’s import basket from Vietnam contains crude oil, pepper, tea, rubber, cinnamon, coal, computer and electronic components. ONGC Videsh has invested US$162 million in offshore oil and natural gas exploration. Esaar Group,Godrej Limited and Ranbaxy are some of the important Indian
companies in Vietnam.