Sustainable Agricultural Development in ASEAN Integration

According to Mr Doanh, despite geo-economic advantages, hardworking and creative, young and cheap rural labour force; and long agriculture and fisheries tradition, Vietnam is exposed many shortcomings.

 

Accordingly, agriculture in recent years has mainly developed in width by increasing acreage, harvests and based on the intensity of the supplies for production and cheap labour costs. Agricultural development is not sustainable and growth rate shows signs of decline, competitiveness is low, not to promote resources for production development. This will bring a lot of difficulties for the integration of agriculture.

 

Sharing the same view, Mr Trinh Ngoc Thai, Vice President of Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation (VPDF) also confirmed, with about 70 percent of the population are farmers, agriculture has always been an extremely important sector, contributing to the socio-economic development of Vietnam. Economic integration in general and ASEAN economic integration in particular brings particular benefits and significant opportunities for agriculture in Vietnam, such as expanding export markets, free trade, attracting investment, and exchange of science-technology. But integration also poses some certain difficulties and challenges.

 

Liliane Dahmen, Director of RLS Southeast Asia Office, said ASEAN Economic Community provides an opportunity for Vietnam's agricultural products but also poses different challenges. In particular, the dependence on imported varieties, outdated farming methods, the process of cooperation between the partners in the production process affect the sustainable development of agriculture.

 

About the opportunities and challenges that ASEAN integration brings, the delegates said that with the commitments in the AEC, Vietnam has the opportunity to increase exports of rice to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia; and vegetables to Cambodia, Myanmar. But Vietnam's agriculture also faces challenges such as increased competition with agriculture, forestry and fishery imports of Thailand and Laos; increased competition with other large competitors such as Thailand in rice, vegetable and fisheries exports.

 

Besides are the challenges in implementing the provisions of food sanitary while this is not as effective as expected, quality competition is still relatively low.

 

According to statistics, the major agricultural products of Vietnam such as rice are exported mainly to the Philippines; rubber to Malaysia; seafood to Thailand, Singapore, etc. To continue to dominate these markets, Vietnam’s agriculture has to develop sustainably by restructuring and improving competitiveness. The restructuring must be in line with increased sustainable development. Agricultural restructuring should focus on restructuring public investment and public services, creating a favourable environment based on the comparative advantages of each region and each locality.

 

Besides, the agriculture sector should apply modern technology in agriculture to increase productivity and quality. To promote investment cooperation, technology transfer, it is necessary to boost investment link to take advantage of opportunities from EVFTA and TPP, technology transfer, labour flows; market information and investment orientation.

 

About investing in the agricultural sector, the participants said that there should be better policies to encourage enterprises to invest in this sector because the current number of enterprises to invest in the agricultural sector is very limited and there are mostly small businesses with limited capital.

 

Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh also specifically noted measures to boost market information systems and forecasting trade promotion. In recent times, the agricultural market has been more volatile, thus providing early warnings and information about the market and the demand for import and export will help businesses to make appropriate and effective strategies.

 

At the seminar, the participants also discussed some of the content around the issue of sustainable agricultural development in the ASEAN integration such as: the role of scientific and technological progress in the development of agriculture goods - achievements and solutions; relations between enterprises and farmers in developing agriculture commodities; the impact of the participation of the ASEAN Economic Community to the agricultural sector; green and environmentally friendly agriculture; environment friendly farming methods.