HANOI, VIETNAM- Vietnam's trade deficit dropped to an estimated US$2.1 billion ($3 billion) for the first half of the year as imports dived, according to official figures released Thursday.

Exports in the first six months fell by 10.1 percent year-on-year to US$27.61 billion, while imports totalled US$29.72 billion, down by 34.1 percent, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in a preliminary report.

For the month of June alone, Vietnam booked an estimated trade deficit of US$1.2 billion.

The country's trade deficit hit a record of US$17 billion in 2008.

In the six-month period, Vietnam - a low-income but booming economy where the gross domestic product grew by 6.18 percent last year - spent US$2.12 billion on steel imports, down more than half compared with the same period last year.

Vietnam's year-on-year imports of machinery and equipment were down by nearly a fifth to US$5.34 billion, while fertiliser imports fell a third to US$710 million.

The country earned US$4.07 billion from exports of garments and textiles, and US$1.09 billion from coffee, down by 12.2 percent.

Vietnam, the world's number two rice exporter, increased its exports of the grain by nearly a quarter to US$1.8 billion.

Between January and June, the Southeast Asian nation - which has sizeable offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea - saw crude oil export revenues fall 41.5 percent to US$3.3 billion.

During that period, Vietnam saw industrial production rise to US$18.5 billion, up by 4.8 percent year-on-year, said the GSO.

The non-state sector reported an increase of 7.6 percent, followed by the foreign invested sector with 4.5 percent. The state-owned sector recorded only an 1.5 percent increase in output.