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Seafood sector eyes quality
The Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) is in the process of identifying key tasks to help its members increase their competitiveness in local and international markets for the 2010-15 period.
Speaking at the association's 4th Congress yesterday in HCM City, Nguyen Thi Thu Sac, Deputy Head of VASEP, said that strict international standards required an improvement in quality of seafood exports.
The association is helping seafood companies in a variety of ways, including giving assistance in the use of data-capture technologies like linear barcodes, 2-D barcodes and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which help to guarantee the quality of seafood.
In addition, it informs farmers of export trade barriers and the strict requirements of world markets.
In collaboration with the Shrimp Committee and the provincial People's Committees, VASEP has also encouraged farmers to stop injecting impure substances into their shrimp in an aim to improve quality.
"It plans to work with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Freshwater Fish Committee to help companies reach international standards on raising seafood sustainably by 2015," Sac said.
Promoting VN
To promote Vietnamese brands, VASEP and the National Trademark Council have created trademarks for key exports such as shrimp, tra catfish and tuna.
To educate its members in global trade, training courses as well as seminars on preventing and settling international trade disputes in exporting activities are also being offered to seafood exporters.
To help companies financially, the Ministry of Finance and the State Bank of Viet Nam will work closely with the Viet Nam Development Bank and commercial banks to assist companies in accessing capital sources, according to Sac.
VASEP is also encouraging businesses to increase competitiveness by working together more closely and or engaging in mergers and acquisitions.
The association said it would ask MARD to consider eliminating or reducing by at least 30 per cent the number of inspection procedures.
"Creating specialised materials areas is also a goal of the association. This would help companies buy raw materials sourced from Viet Nam, rather than imported materials," Sac noted.
Companies must improve human resource training and apply advanced technology to improve production and quality, VASEP said.
At the congress, the association noted that in the past five-year period, VASEP had participated in the Global Shrimp Outlook conference in 2005 and the Aquavision Conference in Norway in 2006 and 2008.
It had worked with the media, including Seafood International and Asia-Pacific Aquaculture and Intrafish publications, to promote the local industry. VASEP has set up a steering committee on tra catfish consumption and production in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta and developed a programme to promote the tra catfish industry through 2020.
In the 2005-2010 period, export turnover of member businesses accounted for 80-85 per cent of the country's seafood export turnover, increasing the country's export turnover from US$2,739 billion in 2005 to $4,503 billion in 2008.
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