March 24, 2005

 

Increase of Vietnam's seafood export in first quarter

 

 

According to official figures, Vietnam's seafood exports remained strong in the first quarter of this year even though the industry encountered problems over anti-dumping tariffs in US market.

 

Ministry of Planning and Investment stated that the first three month of 2005 saw a 15.27 percent rise in seafood export standing 445 million USD, compared to last year.

 

Nguyen Huu Dung, secretary-general of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) said that in spite of strict food sanitation and safety rules, exports to Japan and European union grew by 50 and 70 percent respectively.

 

He said that the surge shown by these two markets has helped to compensate for the decline of exports to the American market due to the shrimp anti-dumping lawsuit brought by US shrimpers against Vietnamese exporters.

 

Potential market

 

Vietnamese counselor in China, Dao Ngoc Chuong, stated that there is sharp increase in demand of high quality seafood in China, making it a potential market.

 

According to market observers the demand has pushed the average cost of fresh seafood imports on the mainland market to nearly 6,000 USD per tonnes.

 

As per Mr. Dung seafood has been sold to China through the border trading or via Hong Kong.

 

Mr. Dung said that being a member of the World Trade Organization, China is moving to reduce small-scale border trading transactions, which gives an excellent opportunity to Vietnam's seafood industry to boost exports to the Chinese market via large-scale transactions.

 

Due to anti dumping duties in the US market on shrimp and catfish, the Vietnam's sea seafood export reached only 2.35 million USD instead of the initial forecast of 2.6 billion USD.

 

This year industry has targeted 2.5 billion USD seafood sale.