Fruit and vegetables export: $US 2.5 billion and higher

Fruit and vegetables export is expected to achieve $US 2.5-2.6 billion. Picture: N.Thanh.

This unepected result is a good news, however, some experts say, if we take full advantage of opportunities, Vietnam should be able to push fruit and vegetables export growth to twice as now.

Export rose over 30%.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), by the end of October, fruit and vegetables export reached approximately 2 billion usd, rose over 30% compared to the same period in 2015. The largest import market of items was China, accounting for over 70%.

Notably, while fruit and vegetables export has recently continued to increase, rice - one of the key agricultural exports of Vietnam has declined significantly. In the first 10 months, rice export only reached 4.2 million tons, approximately $US 1.9 billion, down by 21% in volume and 16% in value compared to the same period in 2015. It is not until October, in fact, that fruit and vegetables export surpassed rice export. MARD Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong said: The potential in export promotion of the items has been relatively large. Fruit and vegetables export of the year is expected to hit $US 2.5 – 2.6 billion.

Talking to VCN reporter, Mr. Dao The Anh, Deputy Director of the Field Crops Research Institute (of MARD) said: That fruit and vegetables export exceeded rice export was good and surprising news. It was important because the rice export market was increasing difficulty, while serveral fruit and vegetables export markets were “unfrozen” with more “breathable” standards of food safety in the context of Vietnam’s deep integration into the world economy. Typically, in the middle September, Australia has certificated to import Vietnam mangoes after nearly 10 years of negotiation.

Related to the issue, according to the Steering Committee for Agricultural market (of MARD): September also marked a memorable milestone in the fruit and vegetables sector as 10 tons of late-ripening longan in Hoai Duc, Quoc Oai (Ha Noi) were exported to Malaysia, paving the way to conquer other markets. Besides, recently, bananas have been an item to promote export. This year, due to some countries such as Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, China having a shortage of bananas, the demand for bananas in North Korea, Japan, the US, EU have increased, thus banana prices were pushed up higher. The Steering Committee for Agricultural market thinks: Breaking the impasse in the “hard” markets such as the US, EU, Japan, North Korea, Canada… has broght dual benefits, both helping farmers to change their practices and productions methods, and preventing Vietnam’s fruit and vegetables from relying so much on markets as before.

Need a reasonably investment in logistical support.

Mr Dao The Anh analyzes, fruit and vegetables export has great potential to expand, while rice export will increasingly face many difficulties. Specifically, rice export continues in competion with Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia…, meanwhile thanks to the Vietnam climate, fruit and vegetables have their own identity, thus, they do not fall into the same situation. “With the open market, if we strive to solve remaining weaknesses, in the future, fruit and vegetables export can raise to $US 5 billion per year, not only $US 2.5 billion”, said Mr The Anh.

However, according to Mr The Anh, there are still many things to do if we want to get to that figure, especially, which requires investment strategy, and building logistical support. Now, Vietnam still lacks a storage system which services for export such as cold storage, and refrigerated trucks. Enterprises with export orders must actively seek to invest, it is very expensive. Seeing the potential in Vietnam’s market, recently, many Japanese logistic firms have invested to related systems in Binh Duong. Those units which have relationships, wholesale customers in Japan earlier have mainly processed, exported fruit and vegetables into Japan. Previously, in Thailand’s market, Japanese enterprises had a joint venture with Thailand to invest logistical support system services for fruit and vegetables export. That helped to boost Thailand’s export of fruit and vegetables into various markets positively. Therefore, Vietnam should learn to apply in order to build, develop the more stable fruit and vegetables sector.

“In order to have a good logistical support system service, I think that MARD should be more active in building policies to attract investment from more domestic and foreign owned businesses, especially under the form of Public-private partnership. When establishing providers of professional logistical support system services, enterprises would be more capable to improve exports, especially to promote exports on a larger scale. It is necessary to say, if we attract foreign investment to join, businesses themselves have their own open relationships, which contribute to expand export markets and help Vietnam to deal with dependence on the traditional markets”, said Mr The Anh.

Many experts appreciated, apart from a reasonable strategy for investing in logistical support service, some basic problems for year pending such as small scale farming, food safety and quality are not high. In order to do that, fruit and vegetables need to be produced under a new style of cooperative model, strenthening the tight relationship between famers and enterprises. In addition, the diversification of products as well as research on development of organic fruit and vegetables for export is also an issue that enterprises should seriously consider.