In the first four months of this year, Vietnam earned nearly2.5 billion USD from seafood export to 139 markets, up 14 percent year-on-year.The top four markets are the US, Japan each accounting for 15 percent, andEurope and China each with 14 percent.
Notably, China could become the largest importer ofVietnamese aquatic products from the second quarter this year considering the growthof 37 percent in the first four months. Last year, China was the fourth largestimporter of Vietnam’s seafood with a turnover of 1.28 billion USD, accountingfor 15 percent of the total.
VASEP General Secretary Truong Dinh Hoe said Vietnameseseafood exporters will continue facing difficulties such as anti-dumping tax, technicalbarriers, the EU’s yellow card warning and problems related to raw materialssuch as instable supply and prices, and origin.
Aquatic products export is estimated at 10 billion USD thisyear, up 20 percent annually.
Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Agriculture andRural Development Tran Thanh Nam lauded VASEP and the seafood industry forpushing seafood export from 1 billion USD in 2000 to over 8.3 billion USD lastyear.
However, the growth in export of tra fish and shrimp isinstable and unsustainable, he said, citing examples of negative impacts on trafish shipments caused by foreign media, or those on shrimp caused by recentsurges in world supply.
He said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Developmenthas directed the Directorate of Fisheries, the Agro Processing and MarketDevelopment Authority and the Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency to review projectson building national trademarks for Vietnamese tra fish and shrimp.
The VASEP General Secretary said the association and the businesscommunity have taken measures to promote the country’s two key aquaticproducts.
After a Spanish television channel with distortedinformation about tra fish farming on Mekong River in 2017, VASEP and thedomestic business community immediately built a scheme to popularise the imageof Vietnamese tra fish in the EU.
VASEP also signed a contract with an EU media outlet tomarket tra fish in the bloc from March-December 2017. As a result, the websiteyoureverydayfish.com was born, becoming a multilingual portal introducingVietnamese tra fish sector and rapidly responding to distorted and negativeinformation in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch languages.
Hoe said VASEP will accelerate trade promotion, marketexpansion and popularise the image of Vietnam’s fishery products. Theassociation will also work to restore the market development fund to cope with arisingproblems regarding prestige and trademarks in export markets.-VNA