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Seafood exports fetch US$3.32 billion in nine months
Seafood exports in September reached US$450 million, lifting total seafood exports for the first nine months of the year to US$3.32 billion.
This is a 21.9 percent increase over last year, according to the General Statistics Office.
With a growth rate of 24.6 percent in the first nine months of the year, seafood processing had the highest growth rate of all the processing industries. The average growth rate of the country’s processing industries during the period was 16 percent.
In the first nine months, frozen shrimp remained the industry’s biggest earner at US$1.16 billion, a year-on-year increase of 7 percent.
Maintaining a high growth rate, tra and basa catfish followed shrimp with US$1.1 billion in January-September. Catfish accounted for 32.3 percent of the country’s total exported seafood, up 5.7 percent.
The amount of exports from the seafood industry so far this year was really worth mentioning, because the industry faced difficulties from the US’s anti-dumping litigation and Japan’s stricter monitoring of imported seafood, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).
The ministry attributed the achievements to seafood exporters increasing their exports to other markets including the European Union.
Given the results gained in the first nine months and the usual pattern, the seafood industry typically sees export level rise in October, MARD deputy minister, Luong Le Phuong, predicted that seafood exports would exceed the annual plan of US$4.2-4.3 billion.
However, experts also warned that there might be a shortage of catfish in the last few months of the year when seafood processors increase their output to prepare for the New Year festival demand.
Phuong recommended seafood processors co-operate with farmers in addition to setting up their own aquaculture areas, so that they can be more active in developing their supplies.
In order to make the fishing industry develop sustainably, MARD has mapped out a project which will focus on processing, feeding and human resource training.
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