There are only 473 companies involved in seafood exports during the first five months of this year, down significantly from 800 companies in the same period last year, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

However, the falling number of exporters has not influenced the country's total export value, as those who departed had low turnovers.

The country's five month seafood exports still experienced a 9.8 percent year-on-year increase, reaching 2.3 billion USD, VASEP general secretary Truong Dinh Hoe has said, attributing this encouraging performance to increasing export turnover of large exporters.

Despite positive increase in terms of value, seafood exporters are now facing with numerous difficulties for their business, including shortage of raw materials for processing and insufficient capital for production and increasing input cost, VASEP said.

Slumping demand for Vietnamese seafood in the EU, the country's largest seafood importer due to eurozone debt crisis was also problematic, it said, adding that Vietnam 's seafood exports to the market slipped by 7.9 percent year-on-year with shrimp and tra fish witnessing the strongest decreases.

In order to better facilitate seafood exporters in the coming months, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has recently proposed two stimulus packages of credits worth 4.4 trillion VND (209.5 million USD).

The proposal, which will be submited to the Prime Minister for approval, included 2 trillion VND (95.2 million ) package for raw materials purchasers and 2.4 trillion VND (114.3 million USD) ones for tra fish breeders.-VNA