Tapioca farmers seek tariff relief

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

The ministry said it had received reports from enterprises dealing in these chips that they were saddled with a large inventory because of the export tax imposed on the product on June 20.

Later, the ministry investigated places having large tapioca chip inventories.

As a result, the export tax, which went up from zero to five percent, led to dried tapioca chip inventories bulging to a whopping 500,000 tonnes, the ministry said on its website.

Therefore, the ministry has put forward a proposal to scrap the five percent tax to help enterprises and farmers deal with a difficult situation and ensure a viable cassava business this year.

The ministry will continue tracking the market to come up with a proposal to reasonably adjust the export tariff on the product, based on production and cassava business statistics and their impact on the domestic market to serve the interest of the state, enterprises and farmers.

In May, the ministry had proposed five percent export tariff on tapioca chips to ensure enough supply of plants producing ethanol for processing ethanol petrol for the domestic market.

Tapioca chips are a main ingredient for producing ethanol and are one of the important materials for processing bio petrol.

Their export has increased sharply in the recent past.

Tapioca chip exports rose by 35.4 percent year-on-year in volume to 2.89 million tonnes and 30.9 percent year-on-year in value to 886 million USD in the first seven months of this year.

China was the largest export market for Vietnamese tapioca chips, accounting for 89.36 percent of the total national exports.-VNA