May 3, 2007

Vietnam seafood earns US$1 billion in Q1

Vietnam has earned a whopping US$1 billion on its seafood exports, including shrimps, prawns, catfish and octopuses in the first four months of this year, posting a year-on- year increase of 20.4 percent, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) on Wednesday (May 2).

VASEP said the country is targeting seafood export earnings of US$3.6 billion dollars this year, up 7.1 percent against last year. The association said Vietnam's seafood exports to the European Union (EU) are likely to escalate by 49 percent to US$1.5 billion dollars in 2007.

Vietnam is expanding its seafood exports to traditional markets such as China, the United States, the EU, Japan, Canada and South Korea, to new ones like the Middle East, East Europe, Africa and South America. It is also focusing on ensuring quality of products, intensifying their trade promotion, building more seafood brand names, and enhancing its capacity of forecasting seafood prices and export demand, said the association.

Vietnam has set targets of annual seafood export growth of over 9 percent in the 2006-2010 period, and export revenues of US$4 billion to US$4.5 billion dollars in 2010.