More Export Opportunities for Agricultural, Forest and Aquatic Products

Despite many difficulties over the first nine months, experts still believe that there are a lot of export chances for Vietnam’s agricultural, forest and aquatic products in the last three months.

 

After nine-month period of striving to boost exports and to seek outlets for agricultural, forest and aquatic products, the country’s agricultural, forest and aquatic export turnover only stood at USD 9.2 billion, accounting for 22 % of the nation’s total export turnover of USD 41.7 billion and falling 11.8 % from a year earlier.

 

According to experts, farm products are influenced not only by the global economic recession but also by unhealthy competition among enterprises. A lot of enterprises have sacrificed their products to break even, ignoring the common benefit of the enterprise community because of their private benefit. This is a dangerous thing for the market. This is also the reason why farm products of Vietnam, particularly coffee, squeezed prices in the global market. Huynh Quang Dau, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Vegetables and Fruit Association brought out an example related to the ignoring the common benefit of in exporting farm products of some enterprises. He said that the regular price of his company’s frozen pineapple product is US$1,000 per ton. Currently, many enterprises offered the product with a price of only US$859 per ton.

 

Some more important reasons are the lack of cultivation area planning, the small production, and that many localities grow the same plants leading to the unstable quality and the supply surpassing the demand.

However, there are many export opportunities for Vietnamese agricultural, forest and aquatic products in the rest of this year, according to economists. It is attributed to the fact that the recent clear economic recovery. Ministry of Industry and Trade estimates that export turnover of Vietnamese agricultural, forest and aquatic products in the remaining three months will rise by US$3.05 billion, bringing the total export turnover for the whole year to US$12.4 billion, down 5.9 % from a year earlier. Many large markets, including South Korea, Russia, Japan and the Middle East are in need of importing Vietnamese agricultural, forest and aquatic products. South Korea plans to import over 7,000 tons of shrimp.

In order to avoid the price squeeze, agricultural, forest and aquatic exporters should not only boost exports to new markets but also to markets with bilateral economic partnership agreements signed with Vietnam to take full advantage of tax incentives. Regarding coffee, the supply sources in the world will fall by 6 %. This is an opportunity for coffee exporters to raise prices equal to those in Brazil and India.