The export value of the agro-forestry-fishery sector saw a slight year-on-year decline of 1.1 percent in the first eight months of the year.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development reported that the value fell to 17.98 billion USD.

The drop was the result of the sharp fall in export value of major farming products, which plummeting 11.7 percent to 9 billion USD against the same period last year.

Contrastingly, fisheries and forestry products saw a year-on-year increase of 1.3 percent and 11.7 percent to 4 billion USD and 3.52 billion USD respectively.

Nguyen Viet Chien, Director of the ministry's Information and Statistics Centre, said the failure of farming products had been particularly damaging and was caused by market difficulties and a reduction in export prices.

In addition, the economic crisis in export markets also stopped Vietnamese farming and fisheries products from reaching their full potential, he added.

Chien argued that Vietnamese commodities did not consistently meet the standards in quality, safety and hygiene expected by export markets.

In order to see an export value recovery, he called on farmers and local export processors to apply technologies for more effective production, improve quality of their products and better organise supply chains.

According to ministry statistics, rice faced the largest reduction in exports due to a decline in export price of 3.2 percent, down to 438.5 USD per tonne against the same period last year.

Rice experienced a year-on-year drop of 15.7 percent in volume to 4.69 million tonnes and lost 18.4 percent in value, falling to 2.05 billion USD.

China was the largest export market of Vietnamese rice, with a total export volume of 1.47 million tonnes, earning 609 million USD, accounting for 32.8 percent of total rice exports.

Rubber also saw a strong fall in export value as prices were cut by 18 percent to 2,387 USD per tonne, leading to a year-on-year drop of 14.1 percent to 1.52 billion USD. Meanwhile, rubber export volume gained a year-on-year increase of 4.6 percent to reach 638,000 tonnes.

During the period, cassava exports had a strong decline of 29.6 percent in volume to hit 2.27 million tonnes and 24.1 percent in value to chalk 742 million USD.

However, cashew and wood products gained increase in both export volume and value for the first eight months. The exports achieved a year-on-year surge of 18.9 percent in volume and 10.8 percent in value for cashew and of 11.6 percent in value for wood products.-VNA