June 12, 2007

Vietnam eyeing to become Southeast Asia's seafood hub

The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Processors (VASEP) has drawn up an action plan for 2007/2008 on Monday (June 11) to achieve its long-term goal of being the centre of seafood processing in Southeast Asia.

According to the Vietnam News Agency, VASEP's Shrimp Committee Deputy president Truong Dinh Hoe also urged trade players to establish an organized system to track product origin and distribution between farmers, wholesalers and processors in an effort to control production and ensure quality controls.

The system would help the industry trace the locations of material production to effectively segregate raw materials from those that contain antibiotics or other banned chemicals.

The VASEP meeting, which was held in Hanoi, also unveiled a project being run with the Ministry of Fisheries to adjust several regulations on the supervision of food hygiene, quality controls and the granting of import-export certificates, the streamlining of procedures and increasing the responsibilities of both businesses and state agencies.

The association also promised assistance in building independent, modern laboratories to help reduce time and costs of food hygiene testing.

The VASEP also appealed to the government to issue a series of policies to encourage the importation of raw materials in order to have processing factories operating at full steam to fully achieve Vietnam's goal of becoming a hub in Southeast Asia.

VASEP says the  country's potential to become the region's centre for seafood processing was pushed by a sharp surge in seafood production and exports in 2006 and early 2007. Exports revenues increased 22 percent year on year to almost US$3.35 billion in 2006 and continued to rise by 17.8 percent to over US$1 billion for the first four months of 2007.