Vietnam seeks to boost agricultural exports to Singapore

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)

The Prime Minister has instructed measures to foster exports of Vietnamese farm produce, aquatic products and other food to the Singaporean market.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was requested to conduct negotiations for the signing of agreements on mutually recognition in the fields of agricultural and aquatic products while working with Singapore’s Agri-food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) to enhance cooperation and exchange.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade was asked to build trade promotional programmes for Vietnamese agricultural products in Singapore and work to connect Vietnamese exporters with Singaporean importers.

During the past three years, two-way trade between Vietnam and Singapore has grown at an annual speed of 12 percent. Last year, Vietnam raked in 2.93 billion USD from exports to Singapore, a year-on-year increase of 10.4 percent.

Most of Vietnamese agricultural exports to the Singaporean market, which has to import 90 percent of its food, are pepper, sea food, rice, vegetable, coffee, cashew nut and rubber. Vietnamese export revenues of those commodities increased 1.3-fold from 274.6 million USD in 2012 to 355.8 million USD in 2014.-VNA