Agricultural exports fall by 7%

Agricultural, forestry and fisheries exports totalled US$1.3 billion in November, bringing the total for the first 11 months of the year to $14 billion, a decline of 6.94 per cent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Coffee exports grew 19 per cent in volume and a 15 per cent in value during the period.

Nguyen Viet Chien, director of the ministry’s Information and Statistics Centre, said that export of agricultural products had not enough time to reflect the gradual recovery in the global economy.

All three sectors saw declines in export value during the 11-month period, with agricultural exports dropping 7.9 per cent compared to the same period a year ago to a value of $7.17 billion, while forestry products declined 10.8 per cent to a value of $2.45 billion and fisheries exports fell 6.28 per cent to a total value of $3.94 billion.

The ministry expected the agricultural, forestry and fisheries sectors would gain a total export value of $15.2 billion for the year. Rice continued to be the leading export product, but its value declined by 7 per cent, at the same time that the rice export volume of 5.3 million tonnes represented an increase of 32 per cent compared to the same period in 2008.

The shrinking export value was blamed on falling global prices that averaged just $447 per tonne, about 30 per cent lower than last year’s price, the ministry said.

The ministry was predicting, however, that the price of rice would increase as the Philippines were suffering from the impacts of recent storms and flooding and would need to import increasing quantities of rice.

Meanwhile, coffee exports grew 19 per cent in volume and a 15 per cent in value during the period, as the export price for coffee, averaging $1,478 per tonne, was 30 per cent lower than in the same period last year.

Viet Nam continued to be the world’s second leading coffee exporter, shipping over 1 million tonnes. Belgium was the leading importer of Vietnamese coffee, buying up 13 per cent of the nation’s exports.

Tea was the nation’s only agricultural product to surge in both export volume and value during the period. The country exported 121,000 tonnes of tea in the first 11 months, earning $159 million. Those figures represented a year-on-year increase of 16.2 per cent in volume and 24.4 per cent in value.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News

Tags: Vietnam Agricultural, Vietnam exports