Vietnam earned US$120 million from fruit and vegetable exports in the first three months of 2010, up 23.6 percent from the same period of 2009 and equal to 0.83 percent of the country’s total export turnover, according to the Vietnam Fruit & Vegetables Association (Vinafruit). However, the result is incommensurate to the potentiality, experts said.
In fact, Vietnam has more than 1.4 million hectares of horticultural land, which is capable of plucking over 6 million tonnes of tropical fruits and picking 10 million tonnes of vegetables of diverse varieties. On the other hand, Vietnam is amongst the largest fruit and vegetable producers in Asia.
In vicious cycle
In spite of such advantages and capacity, Vietnam is got stuck in a vicious cycle of “bigger output - lower price” and “smaller output - higher price.” Both quality and quantity of Vietnamese fruits and vegetables fail to meet requirements of foreign importers. Even, on the domestic market, the Vietnamese fruits and vegetables are put under a heavy competition pressure by foreign delicious but reasonable products from China, Thailand and the United States.
Mr Huynh Quang Dau, Director of An Giang Agricultural Technology Services Company and Vice Chairman of Vinafruit, said: The reason for Vietnam’s inability to tap all horticultural potentialities comes from the irrational and dispersed distribution of cultivated areas. Most fruits are grown in small farms with an area of 1-2 hectares, or even smaller. The average area of an orchard is about 1.2 hectares in the country. Fruits are directly sold to local consumers or small merchants who will sell to bigger wholesalers who will sell to processing facilities. Orchards with area of 30 hectares or larger are rarely seen in Vietnam.
Dau said, without proper planning for local advantage-based intensive cultivation, the Vietnamese fruit and vegetable production is small-scaled and dispersed, leading to high costs. On the other hand, Vietnam has not been able to link different places that grow the same trees. Besides, farmers immediately switch to grow high-valued crops, leading to oversupply and instable quality.
Sadly, companies usually compete by higher prices to purchase products from farmers. Mr Huynh Quang Dau said: “Some companies offer a tiny price margin, just VND100 per kilo, to purchase fruits from farmers in areas we have invested in.”
New ways
Before this context, Vinafruit has put forth orientations and policies for the development of the Vietnamese horticulture. The association targets to enhance the competitiveness of the Vietnamese fruit industry by raising the quality, lowering prices of products, producing high-valued fruits for domestic and foreign markets, increasing incomes of horticulturists, and meeting increasingly diversified demands of investors.
To obtain these targets, Vinafruit has adopted several action strategies like fruit industry linking strategy, integration strategy, competiveness enhancement strategy, branding strategy, training strategy, market construction and development strategy, seedling strategy, fruit cooperative construction strategy, post-harvest technology strategy, processing technology modernisation strategy, and information technology development strategy. Strategies are divided into short, medium and long terms. These strategies essentially need supports of the government, active participations of members and companies, and assistances of international organisations and companies.
Recently, Vinafruit hashosted aworkshop on "Supports to improve competitiveness of fruit and vegetable companies in Vietnam. The workshop has introduced the Global Competitiveness Facility for Vietnamese Enterprises (GCF) funded by the Government of Denmark. This programme aims to boost up the competitiveness of the Vietnamese private sector by improving enterprises' access to information, business services and interest representation. The Danish Government will fund VND210 billion to support Vietnamese private enterprises to improve competitiveness in the period spanning from 2011 to 2013.
GCF-benefited localities include Nghe An, Thanh Hoa, Khanh Hoa, Phu Yen, Dak Lak, Lam Dong, An Giang and Can Tho. Companies wishing to receive supports must prove the capacity, reciprocal capital, production ideas, business feasibility and send the applications to the GCF. The implementation is set to start from January 2011.
The GCF was funded by the Danish Government from 2006. To date, the GCF has supported 96 projects worth VND135 billion in Vietnam.
With such policies, the Vietnamese horticulture is expected to reap more successes in the coming time.
Van Ta
Vietnamese
