Electronic Traceability: Opportunities to Improve Competitiveness of Vietnamese Agricultural Products

In fact, product traceability is required for exporters. This requirement derives not only from the government and independent standard organizations such as ISO, BAP, ASC and MSC, but also from consumers to ensure food safety and corporate social responsibility. Currently, Vietnamese exporters trace product origin with notes on request a step ahead and a step behind, which means that companies set access codes for each shipment and print the codes on a corner of the package. When buyers or importers want to send reports of origin, a copy of the code of the container will be sent to the exporters. The exporters will find the information from the old documents and make traceability report to send to the importer. This approach is not transparent but risky.

 

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan said, over the years, Vietnam has always been at the top exporting countries of agricultural commodities such as rice, coffee, seafood, cashew nuts, pepper, but most of Vietnamese agricultural exports is crude and sold at lower price than the same commodities originated from other countries. According to Deputy Minister Tuan, though Vietnam has many reputable manufacturers with production chain and products strictly certified by authorised agencies such as BAP, GAP, ASC, and CS, most information is not sent at the right time and on the right channels to the consumers. In the information age, but most businesses have not fully recognised the importance of providing clear and transparent information. Moreover, many businesses hesitate to provide information because they think that transparency could put businesses in a weak position or reduce their competitiveness. Commercial fraud harming consumers' interests are fairly popular.

 

Regarding the management bodies, Deputy Minister Ha Cong Tuan said that despite the promulgation of regulations to encourage provision of information and facilitate the implementation of traceability to integrate with the world, not all the government agencies have been fully aware of the importance of providing information to the international markets by means of advanced tools to help reduce necessary procedures for businesses.

 

Dr Dang Kim Son, Director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), said that the competitiveness of commodities of Vietnam is weak due to the lack of transparency of information between farmers and enterprises and between enterprises and markets and vice versa. The consumption trend of the world is changing into transparency of product information, which requires us to adapt to that change. The transparency of traceability of products will help businesses build customers' trust, creates opportunity to sell products at competitive price, and improve brand of agricultural products of Vietnam.

 

According to Mr Armanath Reddy, Chief Advisor of the GCF Vietnam, stressed that the electronic traceability is one of the effective ways to bring Vietnam's agricultural products to highly required markets like the U.S., EU and Japan. Vietnamese enterprises should enhance their awareness of the electronic traceability because of its impact on improving the competitiveness of enterprises in the international market.

 

Mr Ly Hoang Hai, Deputy Director of the Traceverified project said, with electronic traceability, information is required to be reported anywhere such as at distribution system, at the border and the information is also sent faster, easy classified and fully obtained through testing reader barcode on the products, tablets and mobile phones. In addition, electronic traceability also helps reduce the burden of legal procedures for importers of reporting the information.

 

On the beneficial side of the electronic traceability, Mr Hai highlighted, with electronic access system, both distributors and consumers can easily find enough information to buy products from anywhere with a smart phone.

 

Despite such benefits, only a few companies, if not verified by BAP, must have electronic traceability before exporting to the US market. Most other companies, who do not want or do not like the transparency of information, make the traceability just to deal with the regulations of the government. Therefore, they do not want to participate in the electronic traceability although this system is designed and guided specifically for each company at free cost.

 

Also at the conference, the delegates and experts said, to apply and universalise this system requires the communication means to persuade and change the perception of the businesses and the government agencies. This requires the authorities to promulgate regulations to require the businesses to follow up the electronic traceability and introduce simple procedures for businesses in customs clearance, CO level, and food safety inspection) if the electronic traceability is implemented. This conference aims to not only recommend State agencies like the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Department of Vietnam Customs, Department of Food Safety and Sanitation to issue regulations of applying electronic traceability and build partnerships with independent international standard organisations.