To this goal, developingprocessing is a key solution to raising product value, thus increasing exportearnings, which is also in line with the Government’s goal of entering the top15 countries with advanced agriculture, and top 10 with modern farm produceprocessing industry.
In fact, efforts to modernize and further promote technology application inpost-harvest processing have resulted in an increase of between 5-7 percent in theagriculture sector’s annual added value, pushing the average export turnover upby 8-10 percent per year.
Nguyen Thanh Tuan, deputy director of the Department of Industry and Trade ofthe central province of Phu Yen said post-harvest processing is considered akey step in increasing the value of agricultural products and reducing losses,thus helping businesses to seek appropriate markets for their products.
The model of production andconsumption chain in this field has also contributedto improving the value of agricultural products.
According to Nguyen Quoc Toan, director of the agricultural products processing and development department underthe Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), localities nationwide have attracted over 70investment projects worth over 59 trillion VND (over 2.54 billion USD) inprocessing agro-aquaculture-forestry products since 2017.
The country earned 22.58 billionUSD from exporting agro-forestry-aquatic products in the first five months of2021, up 30.1 percent year-on-year, the MARD reported.
Notably, the export value of key farm produce reached an estimated 7.78 billionUSD in Jan-May, 13 percent higher than that of the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the export of forestry, livestock and aquatic products climbed to 7.06billion USD, 166 million USD, and 3.24 billion USD, up 61.8 percent, 43.9 percent,12 percent respectively.
Joining free trade agreements such as the Comprehensiveand Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), the UK-VietnamFree Trade Agreement (UKVFTA), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), has helped Vietnam’s farm produce make inroads intolarge markets, thus pushing its agricultural exports in the reviewed periods,especially aquatic products, vegetables and fruits, rice and tea.
The MARD and the MoIT have organisedonline conferences with localities to seek solutions to help localities inselling their farm produce amidst complicated developments of the COVID-19outbreak.
Attention has been also paid to introducing products on prestigious e-commerceplatforms such as Alibaba, Amazon, Sendo, Voso and Shopee./.