Tue, July 03, 2012
HANOI, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Vietnamese seafood exporters are facing challenges in the coming months, reported the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) on its website on Tuesday.
Vietnam, aiming at pocketing 6.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2012, earned 550 million U.S. dollars from seafood exports in June that increased the export value of the first six months to nearly 2.9 billion U.S. dollars, up 10 percent year-on-year, according to the Vietnam's General Statistics Office (GSO).
During the period, Vietnam's seafood exports to the EU countries met with numeral difficulties due to their debt crisis and tax barriers. The export value to the EU sharply declined, particularly to Germany (down by 26.4 percent), Italy (down 16.3 percent) and Holland (down 10.9 percent), reported the MARD.
MARD also encouraged domestic seafood exporters to expand their market shares to the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Canada, in addition to investing more in domestic production of tra fish for high quality exports to ensure stable prices.
Domestic shrimp exporters are now facing many difficulties when shrimp export prices are falling due to a shortage of local raw materials. Besides, competition is intense from foreign rivals, including those in Thailand, Indonesia and India.
Besides, epidemic diseases impacting brackish water-breeding shrimps and are spreading in the Mekong river delta, also affected the shrimp output.There is not yet effective measure to prevent the disease, said MARD.
In the first half of this year, Japan maintained as Vietnam's biggest seafood importer, who spent over 216 million U.S. dollars for Vietnamese seafood exports, an increase of 27 percent year-on- year. Of the products, shrimp export value to Japan accounted for 27 percent of Vietnam's total shrimp export value. However, Japan is one of the tough markets where Vietnamese shrimp exporters face the most barriers, including rigorous quality check-ups.
So far this year, the country's total fishery output exceeded 2. 6 million tons, an increase of 5.4 percent year-on-year; aquaculture production reached nearly 1.4 million tons, up 6.8 percent; catching production reached nearly 1.3 million tons, up four percent, of which sea catching production reached nearly 1.2 million tons, up 4.7 percent year-on-year.
In the first six months this year, the seafood sector spent 334 million U.S. dollars for imports of raw materials, an increase of 57.3 percent year-on-year, according to GSO.
