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Catfish, shrimp exporters get puzzled with new laws
A lot of seafood material import consignments have got stuck at the seaports due to the new regulations of the Food Safety Law, which has delayed the production and export plan of seafood companies.
According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), its member companies have complained that they cannot get import materials for processing to fulfill the export contracts signed before with foreign partners.
The demand for seafood is increasing sharply in the world’s market, which has pushed the domestic tra fish and shrimp prices up. Black tiger shrimp, for example, is selling at 250-275,000 dong per kilo (20 shrimp per kilo), or 190,000-220,000 per kilo (30 shrimp per kilo).
Meanwhile, tra fish price in Mekong Delta has been increasing sharply in the last week due to the high demand for materials for fulfilling export contracts. The price is now much higher by 4000-6000 dong per kilo than the deepest low seen in July.
After the summer holiday, the demand for tra imports from the EU and US market has been increasing sharply. The volume of tra fish imported by the EU market in the third quarter of the year was double that of the second quarter.
With such high prices of tra fish materials, the prices of products have surged to 3.1 dollars per kilo at the lowest. A lot of seafood exporters have to break the contracts because they could not collect materials before, when the material supply was profuse and the price was low.
Also according to VASEP, since the beginning of September 2011, a lot of European importers have come to Vietnam to order basa filet products. Most of the importers want small-sized fillet, which need small tra fish (850 gram per fish).
Big importers in the two big markets the EU and the US are rushing to seek the supply sources of tra fish to prepare for the Christmas and New Year 2012 sale season. Some Vietnamese exporters have revealed that European and American now accept the price which is 20 percent higher than the summer’s price.
The tra fish price increase will surely bring profit to farmers. However, they do not have more time to farm fish, because it takes six months at least to obtain the fish with the weight of 1.5 kilo for each.
Analysts have warned that in the fourth quarter of 2011, the volume of tra fish materials would decrease by 50 percent in comparison with the previous months. With the current serious shortage, it is foreseeable that there would not be enough materials to fulfill the orders for Christmas and New Year sale season.
Therefore, Vietnamese seafood exporters have to import some kinds of materials and products, including food additives to meet the requirements set by importers.
However, the problem is that a lot of import consignments are still being kept at the ports and they have not been cleared due to the new regulations stipulated in the Food Safety Law. Seafood exporters have got puzzled because they do not know where they should go to to implement necessary procedures to get the imports cleared, because there has been no guidance document for the new law.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) and the Ministry of Health (MOH); all the ministries that take responsibility for controlling the quality of imports. Some products are put under the control of this ministry, while other products under the control of other ministries.
Before the Food Safety Law was enacted and took effect on July 1, 2011, the import of these kinds of products had been going in accordance with the Decision No 42 dated December 8, 2005 and Decision No 23 dated March 29, 2007.
However, things have changed since the new law took effect. The Ministry of Health has refused to grant certificates to some kinds of products because under the new law, the products are no longer put under the control of the ministry.
vietnamnet, TBKTVN
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