September 4, 2008

Vietnam's feed production this year will likely remain unchanged from 2007 at 5 million tonnes, bucking a trend of 10 percent annual growth in feed output over the past 2-3 years.

Industry officials gave this forecast during the 5th Southeast Asia US Agricultural Cooperators Conference on Wednesday (September 3).

"The currency fluctuations and financial crisis in Vietnam have hit the demand for meat and as a result, feed production won't grow this year," said Timothy Lee, director at Uni-President Vietnam Co., a feedmilling company in Vietnam's Bing Duong province.

He said there is not much scope for feed production to fall below 5 million tonnes as a growing population ensures a certain level of demand for meat products.

Tran Trong Chien, chief representative of two US farm lobby groups, the US Grains Council and the American Soybean Association, in Vietnam said as a result of stagnant feed output, both corn and soymeal imports will likely remain unchanged from 2007 levels.

Vietnam imported 2 million tonnes of soymeal and 600,000 tonnes of corn last year, most of it from India.

Tran said over the past month, import activity has slowed to a crawl as traders are finding it very difficult to arrange for foreign currency or get money from the banks due to the prevailing economic environment.