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Vietnam Soviet Union
Vietnamese trade with the Soviet Union was strongly
influenced by aid, trade, and joint planning agreements
associated with Vietnam's Third Five-Year Plan. Imports of oil
and petroleum products, for example, which had averaged less than
9 percent of total imports from the Soviet Union from 1975
through 1980, increased to an annual average of 33 percent of
imports between 1981 and 1985. This change followed a pattern in
which the Soviet Union provided oil-exploration equipment and
technical assistance against future recoveries while providing
for Vietnamese fuel consumption in the meantime
(see
fig. 12).
Machinery and equipment deliveries, averaging 45 percent of
Vietnamese imports from the Soviet Union between 1975 and 1980,
were important because they were intended for Soviet assisted
hydropower, coal mining, and oil exploration projects. Other
major, regularly repeated Vietnamese purchases from 1975 through
1986 included rolled steel and cotton fiber.
Wheat and wheat flour imports from the Soviet Union,
necessary because of repeated crop failures in the late 1970s,
dropped to negligible amounts in the 1980s. Soviet shipments of
chemical fertilizers (principally granular urea) beginning in
1981 appeared to be synchronized with the Third Five-Year Plan's
stress on improving agricultural production.
Soviet deliveries for some projects occasionally spanned two
planning periods; deliveries for other projects were completed
within short intervals. Shipments of agricultural and forestry
equipment, for example, peaked for a short period in 1979 and
1980, while deliveries of materials for two InterSputnik Lotus
telecommunications ground stations began in 1979 and continued at
substantial levels through 1984 before tapering off once
installation work was completed in 1985.
According to the joint Soviet-Vietnamese trade agreement of
1981, bilateral trade was to more than double over the period of
the Third Five-Year Plan. The Soviet Union planned to import more
Vietnamese agricultural products in exchange for increased
Vietnamese imports of Soviet oil, vehicles, metals, construction
equipment, and fertilizers. Although Vietnam's exports failed to
keep pace with projections, gains were reported in such
categories as clothing, household goods, handicrafts, fruits and
vegetables, pharmaceuticals, and raw rubber. Vietnamese
production and export shortfalls, coupled with a persistent
deficit that required substantial subsidies, did not preclude the
Soviet Union's deriving some benefit from the two-way trade. For
example, shipments of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables,
chiefly to the Soviet Far East, ranked fourth in recorded imports
from Vietnam and were favorably reported in Soviet publications.
The Soviet Union also saved valuable foreign exchange by
purchasing some products, such as rubber, from Vietnam instead of
from other countries. Rubber sent to the Soviet Union remained an
important part--some 6.5 percent annually--of Vietnam's total
exports. Soviet assistance provided during the Second Five-Year
Plan to a 2,000 hectare plantation managed by the Phu Rieng
Rubber Company in Song Be Province suggested that preserving the
long-term development of this important rubber source may have
been a critical Soviet concern. Finally, Vietnamese vodka
shipments to the Soviet Union enabled the Soviet Union to
increase exports of its own higher quality product to the
hard-currency markets of the West.
The Soviet-Vietnamese trade plan additionally included
Vietnamese exports of nonferrous metals, although according to
its practice of some years the Soviet Union did not report
transactions in this category. In 1983 the Soviet Union claimed
that Soviet-assisted projects, such as the Tinh Tuc tin mine in
Cao Bang Province, accounted for 100 percent of Vietnam's tin
production.
Data as of December 1987
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