Vietnam fails to boost fishery market share

 

 

Vietnam was not able to boost its global market share at a time when many countries are not buying Japan's products and also during a sharp drop in Thailand's shrimp output, due to a shortage of fishery materials.

 

Phan Xuan Trang, director of Long An-based Pacific Fishery Company, said Vietnam's fishery buyers like Russia and China had decided to suspend imports from Japan on radiation concerns.

 

However, the country's offshore fishing has been badly impacted by the recent fuel price hike, while the farmed fish output has also tumbled after farmers had incurred big losses last year, Trang said.

 

He said his company did not have any plan to boost fishery export this year as it could not secure enough materials for processing.

 

"The supply of caught fish has fallen sharply as fishermen are afraid of losses since the high fuel price has boosted costs by 20%. In addition, many fishing boats do not sell their catch to local processors, but to other Chinese traders right on the sea," Trang said.

 

Dang Kiet Tuong, chairman and CEO of Aquatex in Ben Tre Province, said his company did not manage to expand markets due to the critical shortage of materials.

 

Some other processors have even planned to scale down production due to the problem.

 

Go Dang Joint-stock Company in Tien Giang Province, for instance, will reduce output this year due to the shortage of materials and the higher input costs, said the company's general director Nguyen Van Dao.

 

Dao said that last year his company shipped abroad 25,000 tonnes of tra fish products, but the amount this year would certainly drop.

 

"Given the higher tra fish price on the local market as well as bigger input costs including exorbitant interest rates, not only Go Dang but many other processors as well have no choice but to downsize production if they want to avoid losses," Dao said.

 

The price of shrimp on the local market has also increased strongly, eating into processors' profits.

 

Nguyen Tuan Anh, general director of the fish processing company Ut Xi in Soc Trang, said shrimp output in Thailand is forecasted to drop by up to 60,000 tonnes, pushing up the local price to between VND190,000 (US$9.08) and VND225,000 (US$10.75) per kilo.

 

"At such a high price, few companies are willing to buy shrimp for processing, except those bound to deliver goods to customers in the near term," Anh said.