Agricultural products have opportunities to enter large markets

Enterprises displayed products at the talkshow. Photo: Nguyễn Huế

According to Dang Thai Thien, currently, there are many advantages for exporting agricultural products of Vietnam. Firstly, these are speciality products of Vietnam with high quality and prestige in the world.

Secondly, Vietnam has integrated deeply to the world economy with 12 FTAs that have became effective. In particular, most largest export markets of Vietnam’s agricultural products such as Japan, Australia, Korea have FTA with Vietnam. Typically, Japan has three FTAs including: FTA ASEAN – Japan, FTA Vietnam – Japan and the CPTPP.

Meanwhile, in the last two FTAs, Japan has still not opened its market completely. Then, in the CPTPP, Japan has committed to opening its market and import duty applied for agricultural products would be removed completely in three years.

Similarity, South Korea has also singed three FTAs with Vietnam which have a huge rate of tax reduction.

For Australia, although there were two FTAs, they have allowed Vietnamese agricultural products to enjoyed import duty by 0 percent after the CPTPP took effect.

Several important FTAs were signed with huge rate of tax reduction; Vietnam’s agricultural products have gained huge opportunities to enter large export markets.

With a series of important FTAs ​​that have been signed with strong, deep and rapid tariff reductions, Vietnam's agricultural products have a great opportunity to penetrate major export markets.

Besides two favourable factors as mentioned above, customs procedures for exported goods in general and agricultural products in particular are very clear now. Currently, most export declarations belong to the green channel. With those declarations, it took only 2 to 3 seconds for the company to clear the goods.

According to HCM City Customs Department, currently the green channel declarations accounted for 77 percent, the yellow channel declaration accounts for more than 20 percent, the rest was the red channel declaration. Along with that, enterprises have positive awareness in finding and maintaining export markets.

Despite many advantages, the export of agricultural products were also facing many challenges. Although export markets have made commitments to cut tariffs, they required very high quality products, especially the EU market with strict regulations on quarantine, quality control and origin traceability. Along with that was strict conditions for market penetration. Typically, it took 10 years to bring Vietnam’s mango to the US market.

Therefore, to conquer fastidious markets, export enterprises must learn carefully about the market and the conditions to bring goods into these markets. In addition, at present, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have many solutions to support businesses to bring goods abroad, enterprises must take advantage of the support from these two units to gradually meet requirements of import countries.

Besides, enterprises must comply with customs laws. This was a prerequisite for fast clearance of goods for businesses.

Answering a question of an enterprise related to export standards for agriculture regarding to packaging design, Thien said the labelling of goods has a separate decree regulating mandatory information of the product that must be noted. However the scope of this decree was only for imported goods and domestic consumer goods and it was not applied for export products. Therefore, the labelling for exported goods was based on the agreement between enterprises and customers.

“However, over the past time due to the impact of the trade war between the US and China, it had generated many problems relating to the origin of goods, including many foreign goods entering Vietnam for making fraudulent origin and then exporting to markets in the world, including US market to avoid trade remedies. Therefore, the Government is reviewing the adjustment of this decree for export goods," Thien said.