Increased supplies to meet growing food demand

Higher demand for food including pork and rice will be fully met with increased supply in the final months of this year, two ministries affirmed.

In the meeting with the Government on Monday to discuss market stabilisation methods, the Ministry of Industry and Trade outlined predictions that demand for food and foodstuff would rise between 3 and 5 per cent to the end of 2011.

Demand for pork is forecast to reach up to 2.5 million tonnes, with imported pork making up the difference of the 2.38 million tonnes produced domestically.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) supported the forecast, saying the supply of food had increased this month, easing prices by 5-10 per cent.

MARD also said there had been no shortage in paddy supply over the first half of the year, and predicted the 2011 rice yield would be 41.6 million tonnes, an increase of 1.6 million tonnes on 2010 figures. This would satisfy predicted domestic demand of 27.52 million tonnes this year.

In the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai guided MARD to co-operate with provinces in production to meet demand up to the end of Tet (Lunar New Year) 2012.

Moreover, Hai demanded the ministry support farmers in seed supply and animal breeding in the long term.

These were the most effective methods. However, support must be directly sent to farmers so that prices could be reduced, Hai said.

MARD was also ordered to co-operate with the General Statistics Office to obtain exact figures for controlling and stabilising the price in the domestic market.

In the previous month, the prices of many foods and foodstuffs, including pork and vegetables, strongly surged due to higher import costs, diseases and natural disasters.

According to MARD, the prices of some agriculture foodstuffs increased by 40-60 per cent, while inflation was only 13 per cent. Pork prices jumped the highest, surging by 70 per cent in April over the same period last year.

Meat is already being imported in large quantities, mainly due to the massive differences in the prices of domestic produce and imports. The Veterinary Medical Agency-Region VI said that in the first seven months of the year, 50,500 tonnes of meat were imported, with chicken accounting for 80 per cent.

Nguyen Thanh Son, deputy director of the Animal Husbandry Department, attributed the sharp increase in the import of chicken and pork last month to the big gap between domestic and global prices. Many consumers preferred imported meat as a result, he added.

The Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that in some retail markets in HCM City, imported chicken, mainly wings and legs, was more popular since it was priced much lower than similar domestic products.

Nguyen Thi Tuyet, a retailer at the Go Vap Market said Vietnamese chicken wings cost VND88,000 per kilogramme while imports only cost VND65,000.

Doan Ngoc Tho, a wholesale supplier of imported meat, said sometimes imported chicken legs cost just half the price of imports.

Nguyen Ngoc Hung, director of the Gia Truyen Food Company, said imported pork was also much cheaper, costing VND65,000-70,000 per kilogramme compared to VND90,000 for domestic produce.

Son of the Animal Husbandry Department said while imports would temporarily ease the shortfall and help reduce meat prices, in the long term they would affect the domestic animal-husbandry industry.

So proper measures were needed to check unnecessary imports, he said.

The department was however now focused on technical standards and the food safety of imported meat products, he added. — VNS

Tags: Vietnam food prices