Seafood exports in September down, recovery slow

HCM City (VNA) – Vietnam’s seafood exports continued falling 23 percent in September, following a significant decline of 36 percent in August, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

The association attributed the decrease to shrinking production as the southern localities had to impose social distancing measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Specifically, in the first half of September, most of the southern localities applied social distancing under the Prime Minister’s Directive 16, many processing factories suspended operations, leading to a decrease of 31 percent in the nation’s total seafood export turnover. In the second half of the month, several localities began loosening social distancing, which helped restore some production activities. Seafood export turnover in the whole month reached over 628 million USD, down 23 percent over the same period in 2020.

In the month, seafood exports to the US recovered with a slight increase of 3 percent year-on-year to 159 million USD, while those to other markets continued to decline, with China seeing the biggest drop (nearly 50 percent), and Japan, Canada, the UK and Australia also experiencing decreases of between 35 and 45 percent.

During January-September, the export of aquatic products hit 6.2 billion USD, up 3 percent year-on-year. Notably, shrimp exports reached 2.76 billion USD, up 2.6 percent, the exports of tra fish and tuna rose by 3.2 percent and 9 percent to 1 billion USD and 520 million USD, respectively.

VASEP said that the best outlook for seafood exports this year is to be equal to that of 2020, or 8.4 billion USD./.