HANOI, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam imported completely-built automobiles and components for assembly totaling 598 million U.S. dollars in January, recording a year-on-year surge of 118.9 percent, according to its Ministry of Industry and Trade on Thursday.

Specifically, the country imported 10,000 completely-built automobiles worth 248 million U.S. dollars, compared with only 1,000 units imported in January 2018.

Early last year, few automobiles, especially cars, were imported to Vietnam because traders were not well-prepared to comply with a new governmental decree which requires traders to provide more relevant certificates and to undergo more tests than before, local experts explained for the import surge early this year.

In 2018, Vietnam spent nearly 5.4 billion U.S. dollars importing completely-built automobiles and components for assembly, seeing a year-on-year drop of 2.6 percent. Specifically, the country imported roughly 81,800 completely-built automobiles worth nearly 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, posting respective declines of 16 percent and 19.9 percent.

According to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers' Association, more than 288,600 automobiles were sold in the Vietnamese market in 2018, up nearly 6 percent from 2017. Specifically, the sale of locally-assembled automobiles rose 11 percent, and that of imported vehicles dropped over 6 percent.