HANOI (Commodity Online) : Vietnam has exported 131,000 tones of cashew till September this year, earning $614 million of export turnover, according to country’s Agriculture ministry.

In comparison with the same period of 2008, export volume has increased by 9 percent but down 10 percent in value.

Trade sitting at the comfort of home. Start with a mere 50$

The main reason was that the cashew export price dropped by $900 to only $4,700 per tone compared to that of last year.

The ministry said at present, Vietnam is the world's leading cashew exporter with about 400,000 hectares of growing cashew trees.

Due to the continual increase in cashew processing industry, the growing area has only provided 60 percent of the total raw materials for processing.

The rest 40 percent of raw materials is from imports from other countries such as Ivory Coast and Indonesia.

The main export markets of Vietnam's cashew products are the US, Australia, China and Europe. During the last period, the export volume to Eastern Europe has sharply declined by 10 percent; meanwhile that to China and the US increased by 10 and 14 percent respectively.

Thanks to the positive recovery in the world's economy, Vietnam has expanded cashew export market to other countries in Asean region and Japan.

It's estimated that Vietnam will earn about $800 million of total export turnover in 2009, down 10 percent year-on-year.