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Vietnam imports salt for first time
It is really strange that Vietnam, a country with 3,000km of coast, has to import salt in the salt season.
The salt price is currently three times more than the same period of last year but salt farmers don’t have salt to sell. The government, thus, has to allow traders to import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of salt. This is the first time Vietnam has had to import salt for daily use.
The shortage of salt has pushed up salt prices by three times. Salt bought at salt fields is between VND1,400-1,500 per kilo, compared to VND350-400 per kilo last year.
Ninh Thuan Company, the largest salt producer in southern Vietnam, said they have never been in this situation, when it doesn’t have salt to sell and has to refuse many orders.
The Thanh Hoa Salt and Trade JS Company, one of the major salt producers in the north, is in the same situation. “We are out of salt though this is the salt season in the north. In previous years, we often bought salt in the three-month salt season to stock for the whole year. But it is different this year,” said the company’s director.
Last year the firm bought 4,000 tonnes of salt for export and it sold it all but this year it was able to buy only several tens of tonnes. The company is worrying that it may have to pay fines to foreign customers if it can’t fulfill signed contracts.
Many other companies are facing hardships owning to the shortage of salt.
Pham Nang Phong, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam Salt Corporation, said the shortfall of salt began in late 2007.
“It is good for salt farmers when salt prices increase but salt farmers don’t have salt to sell. But if they have salt to sell, it is difficult for traders to buy at such high prices when the salt harvesting period last for three months only. It is very difficult to borrow money from the bank. Moreover, the interest rate is high, up to 19%, and most salt businesses can’t afford it,” Phong said.
To solve the shortage of salt, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has imported salt. It firstly imported only industrial salt to serve production but now it has to import even daily salt.
Vietnam set a record for importing salt in 2000 when it bought 500,000 tonnes. From 2003-2007, the country imported over 200,000 tonnes of industrial salt annually. In 2008, besides importing industrial salt, the MARD had to grant quotas to import 40,000 tonnes of daily salt.
The salt is mainly bought from India and Australia at higher prices than in Vietnam, at around VND1,600 per kilo. In early 2008, the government had to open its warehouses to sell 30 tonnes of salt to the market.
The MARD built a 2,500ha salt field in Quan The, in the southern province of Ninh Thuan in 2000, which can produce 300,000 tonnes of salt per year, and is believed will sufficiently help Vietnam dealt with its salt shortage. However, this salt field doesn’t make salt yet.
The Vietnam Salt Corporation’s Pham Nang Phong agreed with MARD’s import of salt but he said this is a temporary solution. “It is necessary to conduct scientific and systematic surveys on salt production in Vietnam, the need for salt of each industry and society to have a salt production strategy,” Phong suggested.
He also proposed establishing a national agency to conduct the survey.
According to scientists, each person needs 4-5kg of salt per year, so Vietnam needs around 400,000 tonnes of daily salt/year. The total demand for salt is around 1 million tonnes per year. Though the country’s salt fields have been expanded, the total supply is only 900,000 tonnes/year from the total area of 13,000ha of salt fields.
VNN
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