Ministry to draft new rules for agricultural sector

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will draft and enforce stricter regulations concerning the production of agricultural, forestry and seafood products.

Minister Cao Duc Phat was speaking at an online conference with provincial and district-level authorities in Ha Noi on Friday.

Figures from the ministry’s Department of Plant Protection show that Viet Nam has about 200 businesses selling plant protection chemicals and 29,000 shops selling the product.

Director of the department Nguyen Xuan Hong said most of enterprises still had to import the chemicals and then resold the product to farmers.

Inspections at the country’s border gates revealed that about 4-5 percent of the imported chemicals were found to be of substandard quality, he said.

There were several violations in central Thanh Hoa and southern Tien Giang provinces, which accounted for 29 and 33 percent of the country’s total violations.

According to Hong, ineffective fines were blamed for the high rate of violations.

“Management policies in this field are quite clear and specific, but ineffective punishments lead many businesses to continue operating without trade licences,” he said.

To deal with the issue, Minister Phat urged relevant authorities to promptly re-examine criteria to classify businesses. He also said legal statutes need to be drafted that address agricultural products’ origins. – VNS

Posted by VBN on May 9 2011. Filed under Agriculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry