Vietnam earned 3.3 billion USD from exports of mobile handsets and spare parts in the first two months of 2014, posting a year on year increase of 22.9 percent.

Mobile phones and their accessories topped the list of processed industrial products, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Mobile phones, the country's most lucrative sector in January, generated 1.7 billion USD, representing an increase of 14.6 percent over the same period last year, and 38.5 percent over December 2013, the ministry said.

The EU, the United Arab Emirates, the US and Russia are the main importers of Vietnamese mobile handsets and components.

Their export value helped raise total two-month export earnings of processed industrial products to 15 billion USD, an increase of 16.8 percent over the same period last year.

Vietnam's exports of phones and accessories witnessed a sharp year-on-year increase of 69.2 percent in 2013, making mobile phone products among the country's most important export items.

This is the first time exports of phones topped the list of Vietnam's key export items, with revenue of over 21.5 billion USD, according to information released by the General Statistics Office.

Exports of phones and accessories accounted for one fifth of the country's total export turnover, and 50 percent of the trade sector's growth, said the office.

In 2009, mobile phones ranked ninth among the country's top 10 export items behind garments, footwear, crude oil, seafood, electronics, computers and spare parts, wood and wood products, rice and rubber.

One year later, they climbed to fourth place after garments, crude oil and footwear.

The sharp increase in the export turnover of phones and accessories was attributed to the contribution of Samsung plants in Vietnam, which were responsible for 98 percent of Vietnam's mobile phone and accessories exports in 2012.

Exports of phones last year were followed by garments, with 17.89 billion USD, and electronic products, computers and spare parts, at 10.67 billion USD in revenue, according to the General Statistics Office.

Vietnam spent 25.7 billion USD in 2013 for imports of equipment for production of phones, computers and other electronic products.

Source: VNA