Vietnam's Analysis Data and The numbers reflected differed from the "FACT"

I have been leaving my country for 4 years, so I am really curious what have changed in my country, Vietnam recently. Using Trade History plot on SAS website showed me that from 2008 to 2013, Vietnam exported to China the most, and ranked down to Japan, Australia, Germany, and Malaysia; and imported from United States, Republic of Korea, other Asian countries, Thailand, and Singapore. These searching results are really surprised me because when I was working for the import-export company in Vietnam, the fact was United States had been the top export partner of Vietnam based on the market research and the statistical data of Vietnamese customs Department.  

 According to the data on this chart, Vietnam exported during 2008-2013 around $376 billion, and imported around $437 billion. The difference between export and import was approximately $61 billion. This number might not be a big deal with the developed country with strength value of money. But if you think about $1 exchanged to 20,000 VND, it really did put Vietnam into the deep trade deficit, which led the huge decrease of Vietnam’s GDP. Now I understand clearly why most of my friends graduated with Master degree, but still had to work as waitress or waiter at coffee shop, or restaurants because no jobs created when the country faced the recession.

“Talking about Vietnam, we all know that Vietnam is the agricultural country which was view as the world’s second largest rice exporter in the world”. This statement have been teaching in the school system about history, geography, economics, and spreading around the country through all kinds of media. I was very proud my country because of the development of agricultural industry. Everything was doubted when I had better perception about how small Vietnam is in order to provide rice for the whole big world. Vietnam Food Association (VFA) data also emphasized one more time that rice exports from Vietnam in 2012 reached a record high of 7.7 million tons, thereby maintaining its place as the world’s second largest rice exporter

However, what I am seeing right now on the data from SAS that top 5 commodities were exported from Vietnam did not include any rice section. My first question is if Vietnam reports these data, why it had to hide that Vietnam is the top rice exporter in the world. The second question is if SAS data provided is correct, why the Vietnamese government reports the wrong information of its economic data to its people. And the third question for myself is why the reports between data and mirror data on SAS have a lot of differences. Hopefully, all of my questions will be answered in the future when countries honestly report their economic situations.

References:

Import-export Data. SAS Comtrade, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

"Vietnamese Rice Export." Vietnam Customs. N.p., 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.