There are many obstacles for mountainous products to reach the shelves of modern distribution systems

Western fruit specialties at the market. Photo: T.H

Many featured products

Implementing the program "Support to promote the consumption of products in ethnic minority and mountainous areas", the Ministry of Industry and Trade organizes activities to form a supply chain, stimulating the participation of many economic sectors. Participate in investment and promote the production and consumption of products.

The activities have attracted the participation and cooperation of large distribution systems such as Saigon Co.op; Central Retail, Winmart, MM Market Aeon, and BRG,... participate in consumption connection. These systems have organized priority displays and had separate demand-stimulating events for local specialty products in general and products of ethnic minorities in particular, creating clear effects.

Localities have increased trade promotion activities, connecting with distribution systems to consume people's products. Son La province regularly coordinates with the Central Retail Group to organize trade promotion activities for local specialty products.

Currently, there are about 60 agricultural products of all kinds from Son La province regularly displayed on the shelves of the system of 18 supermarkets including GO!, Big C, and Tops Market in the Northern region.

In the past two years, many specialty products of Yen Bai province have been available in large supermarkets in Hanoi and provinces and cities nationwide, thereby enhancing the brand and value in agricultural and forestry production. of locality. These are precious specialties with unique characteristics of highland regions, of natural origin, with safe, organic raw material areas, traditionally produced... such as Dai Minh grapefruit, Tu Le sticky rice, Gioi vermicelli, dried pork, Van Yen cinnamon, Luc Yen red peanuts.

However, in reality, the rate and frequency of products from ethnic minority areas in the distribution system are not high. At the seminar: "Promoting consumption of products in ethnic minority and mountainous areas in modern distribution systems", organized by Industry and Trade Magazine on October 5, Ms. Dao Thi Thu Nguyet, Deputy Director Gia Lai Department of Industry and Trade analyzed that Gia Lai has favorable climate and soil suitable for key crop varieties such as coffee, pepper, and rubber. Enterprises and cooperatives also take advantage of and apply processing technology to improve product quality.

Gia Lai's strong products have been exported to European countries such as: The lamant coffee brand, pepper, and medicinal herbs... produced by cooperatives, finding outlets for the crops of the people. In addition, Gia Lai currently has more than 300 OCOP products from businesses and cooperatives, including nearly 50 3-star products, many of which have achieved provincial-level typical rural product certifications, regional-level, well-characterized products are highly appreciated by consumers.

Removing logistics obstacles

However, besides the advantages, Gia Lai also faces many difficulties such as: uneven development among localities in the province; the educational level of remote areas is not high; Goods exchange activities in remote and isolated areas and ethnic minority areas are not yet vibrant. Besides, the work of attracting businesses to invest in infrastructure in remote areas also faces many difficulties, not many.

Meanwhile, from the purchasing unit perspective, Mr. Kieu Song Hao, Northern Purchasing Director, MM Mega Market Vietnam said that recently, MM Mega Market has had solutions to support people. bringing goods into its distribution system, specifically: supporting people to transport goods and distribute them at supermarkets; Organize OCOP weekly...

According to Mr. Kieu Song Hao, in terms of product standards, cooperatives, and farmer households in provinces and cities are implementing relatively good food safety standards, Vietgap, GlobalGAP certificates, or instructions of geography... But the biggest obstacle of the supermarket system is that units, provinces, and cities only focus on a few product groups, leading to a lot of output but not much consumption, since supermarkets want to sell a lot of regional products, with many items and product codes of many provinces and cities, not just 1-2 products.

"Supermarkets cannot import dozens of tons or entire containers at once. The nature of supermarkets is to sell to consumers every day and import goods every day. When cooperatives and localities only focus on producing one group of products, even though the products are good, of good quality, and with good packaging, it is difficult to sell," Mr. Kieu Song Hao shared.

To continue promoting the consumption of local products, one of the problems that need to be solved is solving warehousing and logistics problems. Mr. Nguyen Van Hoi thinks this is an important issue.

Therefore, in the coming time, there needs to be a logistics development program to serve goods in this region. Because goods in ethnic minority and mountainous areas have specific characteristics, are scattered across regions, are divided in terms of seasons and specialties, and have different typical seasons.

“Not all businesses in ethnic minority and mountainous areas can connect directly to modern distribution systems, so the service role of logistics businesses is very important.