September 26, 2011

  

Vietnam encouraged to support local animal breeders

 

 

Vietnam should back up the local private animal breeders by giving them preferential loans, according to Le Ba Lich, chairman of the Vietnam Animal Feed Association.

 

It will help local animal breeders raise their competitiveness in the domestic market, producing more animal offspring for local farmers at low production costs, Lich said, adding that by this way, the country's livestock will develop and provide more products for domestic consumption at lower prices.

 

Currently, the Vietnamese livestock depends heavily on foreign-invested firms, who take the large part of domestic market of eggs, chicken, animal feed and pork, Lich noted.

 

Three of them, CP Group, JAFPA and EMIVEST control a large market share of chicken offspring and they sell one-day young chicken at VND26,000-28,000 (US$1.25-1.34) each while they buy maturated chicken at VND34,000-36,000 (US$1.63-1.73) each.

 

Reasonable prices for chicken offspring could be at VND11,000-12,000 (US$0.53-0.58) per unit, Lich calculated.

 

Lich also urged Vietnamese firms working in livestock sector to cooperate, restructuring their business in order to raise their production efficiency and competitiveness.

 

Local firms should build business strategy and cooperate with each other to raise their market share in Vietnam, Chairman Lich said.

 

Lich praised the success of the Thailand-based CP Group in Vietnam, saying local firms should learn CP Group in doing business.

 

After 18 years working in Vietnam, it becomes a large firm with annual revenues of US$1.1 billion and ranks at the 23rd among top 500 largest firms in Vietnam, taking 50% of domestic market share for eggs, 40% for chicken, 20% for animal feed and 5% of pork.

 

Due to high price of animal offspring, animal feed and regular occurrence of animal diseases, many Vietnamese farmers had been forced to give up their business while thousands of other investors switched to work for foreign-invested firms under contract. However, they earn very little profit which is not deserved for their big investments in building production facilities.