Vietnam increased imports of crude oil and coal products in bulk during the epidemic. The import price of coal and crude oil is much cheaper than the export price of the same item.
According to statistics of the General Department of Customs, in July, the amount of imported coal from Vietnam reached nearly 4.4 million tons, the price of imported coal was about 1.4 million dongs/ton. In the first 7 months of the year, the volume of coal imported to Vietnam reached nearly 36 million tons, with a turnover of 2.5 billion USD.
Coal volume imported to Vietnam is estimated to increase over 46% over the same period last year, the average unit price is 1.6 million VND / ton.
The markets that Vietnam imports coal from the most are Indonesia, Russia, and China. Although coal imported from China to Vietnam is little, about 140,000 tons, the price is very high, about 6.2 million dongs/ton. This is nearly 3 times higher than the average buying price of other countries and the market price.
Coal from Indonesia was imported the most in the past 7 months with 11.2 million tons, with a turnover of more than 540 million USD. The average price was more than 1.1 million dongs/ton.
Compared to Vietnam’s export coal price in the same period, the average imported coal price in countries is currently less than 1.5 million dongs/ton. Vietnam’s coal export volume in the last 7 months reached more than 410,800 tons, with a turnover of more than 57 million USD. The average selling price is 3 million dongs/ton, equal to half of the coal price imported from China and nearly 3 times higher than coal price. imported from Indonesia.
Vietnam’s coal import activities have increased recently. In 2019, Vietnam imported more than 43.7 million tons of coal of all kinds. The turnover reached 3.78 billion USD, increased by 91% in output over the same period last year.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam’s increasing coal imports in large quantities is mainly due to the demand from large power plants. Meanwhile, domestic coal exploitation is increasingly difficult and costly due to the need to be exploited deep in the ground, which is hard to operate and with low yield.
Vietnam’s electricity master plan 7 still has a large number of coal-fired thermal power plants, including BOT thermal power plants, thermal power plants for industrial parks, and export processing zones that have their own coal trading mechanism. Therefore, enterprises unilaterally signed contracts to import cheap coal from abroad instead of buying domestic coal.
Another raw material item is crude oil. In recent years, Vietnam suddenly has also imported in large quantities. According to the General Department of Customs, based on the HS code, Vietnam’s exported coal is mainly high-quality coal, coal imported from China is also high-quality coal for iron refining.
Types of coal imported from Indonesia and Russia are mainly coal bran, serving thermal power plants, power plants in export processing zones, and industrial zones.
Regarding crude oil, according to statistics of the General Department of Customs, in the first 7 months of the year, Vietnam imported more than 7.2 million tons, with a turnover of more than $ 2.35 billion. The average crude oil price was about 7.5 million/ton.
The output of crude oil imported to Vietnam also increased by nearly 50% over the same period last year. The import price of crude oil in the first 7 months of 2020 is only equal to 65% in the same period last year (VND 11 million / ton). The import of crude oil in the context of falling crude oil prices is beneficial for petrochemical refineries in Vietnam.
Source: Dantri.
