Vietnam earned 602 million U.S. dollars from exporting coffee in the first half of this year, up 31.1 percent over the same period last year despite lower volume of the goods, according to a local trade agency on Wednesday.

Between January and June, the country shipped abroad 525,000 tons of coffee, mainly to the European Union, the United States, Japan and Singapore, posting a year-on-year decrease of 12.4 percent, said the Trade Information Center under the Trade Ministry.

Vietnam, the world's second biggest coffee exporter, is diversifying coffee products for export, partaking more actively in international coffee trading floors, and applying more advanced farming and processing techniques.

Vietnam, which had some 505,000 hectares of coffee by mid-2005, exported 885,000 tons of coffee totaling 725 million dollars in 2005, down 9.2 percent in volume, but up 13.1 percent in value over 2004, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

Source: Xinhua