Fruit, vegetable export picks up despite COVID-19

Vietnamese bananas put on sale in the RoK (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam’s exports of fruits and vegetables to major markets like the US, the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Thailand have surged despite the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

Exports of those products to Thailand brought home 68 million USD, up 233.4 percent; the RoK 67.4 million USD, up 21.8 percent; the US 62 million USD, up 6.1 percent; Japan 57.7 million USD, up 15.5 percent; and the Netherlands 34 million USD, up 9 percent.

However, a reduction of 29.1 percent year-on-year in exports to China in the January-May period has affected the value for the first half, which hit 1.79 billion USD, down 12.2 percent year-on-year, reported the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoIT)’s Agro Processing and Market Development Authority (AgroTrade).

In the first five months of this year, Vietnam earned 906.1 million USD from fruit and vegetable export to China, down 29.1 percent year-on-year.

The AgroTrade said lychees contribute significantly to fruit and vegetable export in the first half of this year.

Apart from the main market of China, local exporters have shipped lychee to the US and Japan.

The Vina T&T company expects to export 50 tonnes of lychees meeting GlobalGAP standards to the US this year.  

Meanwhile, the first batch of Bac Giang lychees arrived in Japan on June 20 morning.

The MoIT’s Export and Import Department said Vietnamese bananas have become available at the Lotte supermarket system in the RoK while dragon fruits, lychees and rambutans are popular in India.

With the European Union – Vietnam Free Trade Agreement taking effect on August 1, AgroTrade Director Nguyen Quoc Toan urged the sector to overcome technical and quality barriers in order to better tap opportunities./.