International Trade

Vietnamese rice exporters have been told to try to penetrate non-China markets to make bigger profits. However, they have not made efforts to attack markets in France and the US.  Vietnam, which has been exporting rice for 30 years, China remains the largest market which consumes 50 percent of its total export volume. However, exports to China can only bring modest profits, while Vietnam’s rice remains unknown to Chinese consumers. Though Chinese import millions of tons of rice from Vietnam, the rice products available at supermarkets in China don’t bear Vietnamese brands.

From April 4-8, members of the Western United States Agricultural Trade Association (WUSATA) visited Hanoi to discuss the potential of increasing agricultural exports to Vietnam. The group met with Vietnam’s agriculture and trade ministers to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and promote trade and cooperation between 13 western states of the US and Vietnam.

HÀ NỘI Viet Nam News - — Việt Nam gained a year on year increase of 41 per cent from export value of vegetable and fruit to US$526 million in the first three months of this year. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Vietnamese vegetable and fruit products have made forays into some tough markets that include Japan, South Korea and the United States (US). However, China remained the largest exporter of Vietnamese vegetable and fruit products, accounting for 71 per cent of the total vegetables and fruits, because this market does not need very high quality products as the other markets.

The Philippines can import another 500,000 tonnes of rice to boost state reserve stocks, a grains agency official said on Tuesday, as the government sought to mitigate the impact of an El Nino-linked drought on food supply. Fresh demand from the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest rice buyers, could underpin export prices in neighboring Vietnam and Thailand, traditionally Manila’s main suppliers. President Benigno Aquino has given the state grains procurement agency, National Food Authority (NFA), a “standby authority” to import up to half a million tonnes for this year’s requirements, NFA Administrator Renan Dalisay said.

Vietnamese seafood exports rose 2.3% year-on-year during the first quarter of 2016, according to Vietnam Directorate of Fisheries, reports VASEP. The rise was attributed, in part, to favorable weather and lower fuel prices. According to the country's department of customs, seafood export value as of March 15, 2016 was estimated at nearly $1.2 billion, an increase of 9.5% y-o-y

Vietnam has lost rice export contracts as some of its major markets including Indonesia and the Philippines have canceled their import plans. The Vietnam Food Association (VFA) has confirmed the information, saying that political factors in the first months of 2016 have affected import/export activities. Dan Viet reported that Bulog, the Indonesian Bureau of Logistics? has ceased rice transactions with four supply sources which have memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Indonesian government, namely Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia and Vietnam in the February plan.

Pepper shipments from Vietnam, the world's biggest producer, will likely rise 13 percent this year, pushing down export prices, according to the chairman of the nation's industry group. Exports will climb to 150,000 metric tons from about 133,000 tons in 2015, Do Ha Nam, the chairman of the Vietnam Pepper Association, said in an interview. While production will also rise - by 10 percent to about 140,000 tons - he said output from the likes of India, Indonesia and Malaysia will probably decline because of the impact of El Nino, limiting the effect on global supply.

HANOI: Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, will export an estimated 160,000 tonnes (2.67 million 60-kg bags) of coffee in March, up 18.8 percent from a year earlier, the government said on Friday, in line with market expectations. The shipment brought to 794,300 tonnes the country's coffee exports so far in the 2015/2016 season, an increase of 19.9 percent from the previous season, the General Statistics Office said in a monthly report.

Vietnam, the world's third-largest rice exporter after India and Thailand, will export an estimated 1.59 million tonnes of the grain in the first quarter of 2016, up 41.6 percent from a year ago, the Agriculture Ministry reported on Friday. Revenue from the January-March rice shipments, headed mostly for Indonesia, China and the Philippines, will reach an estimated $692 million, up 40.8 percent from the same period last year, the ministry said in its monthly report.  Vietnamese 5-percent broken rice quotations rose to $385-$390 a tonne, a five-month high, on fears of crop damage caused by dry weather and the intrusion of sea waters in the Mekong Delta food basket, traders said on Friday. 

The United States (US) has levied higher anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese warm-water shrimp exports during the period of review from February 1, 2014 to January 31, 2015. This decision was taken at the 10th administrative review (POR 10), according to a notice of the International Trade Administration (ITA) on March 10. The POR10 was requested on 51 Vietnamese shrimp exporters, including two mandatory respondents, Minh Phu Group and Soc Trăng Seafood JSC (Stapimex).

Vietnam’s shrimp exports to the European Union (EU) declined by 19.7 per cent year on year in 2015, to USD 548.6 million, due to the fact that regional economy faced troubles, that consumers tightened spending and to the euro devaluation against the dollar, which negatively affected imports. Among the three main Vietnamese shrimp importing markets in the EU bloc, the UK was the only market recording positive growth of 13.4 per cent compared to 2014 due to higher demand for warmwater shrimp caused by lower coldwater shrimp supply with high price, reported the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters & Producers (VASEP).

Though Vietnam has fulfilled the procedures and paper-work related to plant quarantines to enter new markets, many countries are still slow to accept Vietnam’s products. Hoang Trung, deputy director of the Plant Protection Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), noted that Australia was very difficult to  please. Vietnam can only export litchis to the market. Vietnam has also fulfilled all necessary procedures to ask Australia to open its market to other Vietnam’s products, such as mango and dragon fruit. All the technical issues relating to mango exports have been settled. But Australian agencies will send staff to Vietnam to examine radiation establishments in Vietnam.

In spite of the fact that Vietnam has fulfilled the necessary procedures to enter new markets, such as Australia and Taiwan, uptake of Vietnamese products is still very slow. Hoang Trung, deputy director of the Plant Protection Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), noted that Australia in particular is difficult to please and currently, the country is only accepting litchi exports.

Vietnamese coffee exporters are not shipping fresh stock this week as they face tight supply due to dry weather prevailing in the country, traders said on Tuesday. The dry season in Vietnam, the world's top robusta producer, has started peaking in the Central Highlands coffee belt, requiring growers to step up the watering of trees.  Traders said many growers were not selling their produce because domestic prices did not improve much from late February, when a kg of robusta was 29,300-29,500 dong ($1.3), the lowest since mid-November 2013. On Tuesday, robustas stood at 30,700-31,100 dong/kg in Daklak, the country's main coffee-growing province, up from 30,700-30,900 dong last Thursday, but which were still down from early last week. 

The country has over 27 thousand hectares of planted all kinds of flowers, equivalently of the large flower-exporting countries in the world, such as India, Netherlands ... Whether large production area and quite-large amount of flowers, flower-exporting of Vietnam is still limited.