Vietnam likely to be affected by RoK’s tougher pesticide rules

HCM City (VNA) - In 2019, the Republic of Korea (RoK) will tighten rules related to use of pesticides for agricultural products it imports, and Vietnam is expected to be affected.

With the advent of the Vietnam–Korea Free Trade Agreement in 2015, it has become much easier for Vietnamese agricultural and seafood products to enter the Korean market.

But the new regulations could change things since Vietnam still uses many types of pesticides in key export products such as coffee, peanut, cashew, and fruits that it has not registered with the RoK.

The RoK has approved a list of 370 kinds of pesticides and all imported agricultural products are carefully checked when they land in its ports.

According to the Korean Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), imports of foods have increased sharply and authorities have to tighten oversight.

In 2016, the country unveiled a pesticides list to improve food safety, applying it now to tropical fruits and various seeds, and it will apply to all agricultural products from the beginning of 2019.

KOTRA also reported that in 2015 – 2017 many Vietnamese products were refused entry into the RoK because of high pesticide content or use of unapproved pesticides.To find a solution, Vietnamese authorities strengthened their ties with their Korean counterparts.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Plant Protection Department has worked with the Korean Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency to supervise processing of dragon fruits and mango before exporting to that country.

Vietnam has also provided all information about star apple, longan, litchi, and rambutan to the agency.

To help Vietnamese enterprises export agricultural products to the RoK, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has made regulations for the registration, manufacturing, trading, and usage of pesticides more stringent and set up propagation models to promote biological pesticides, targeting 30 per cent use of biological pesticides by 2020,” said Bui Thanh Huong of the Plant Protection Department .

The Department has stepped up oversight of the use of pesticides and provides companies with information about new food safety regulations in importing nations.-VNA