Pepper sector growing up

Vietnam has been the world’s leading pepper exporter for many years. Basing on this advantage, Vietnam Pepper Association (VPA) is planning to control the price and regulate the world market via exporting gradually pepper quantity during the year, instead of focusing on the harvests.

According to VPA, in Q1, average pepper export price reached $2,809 per tonne, up 29.6 percent against the same period last year (last year’s average price was only $2,387 per tonne).
Currently, whereas the price of many other export agricultural products such as rice, coffee, cassava and cashew nut are decreasing, the pepper price is increasing to $3,000-3,100 per tonne.

According to statistic from general Department of Vietnam Customs, in 2009, Vietnam exported 134,264 tonnes of pepper (if including export quota to China, the figure will be over 154,000 tonnes), with total export turnover of $348.1 million, marking a banner year for Vietnam’s pepper sector in both export quantity and value, exceeding far from three big pepper exporters of Indonesia (40,000 tonnes), Brazil (32,000 tonnes) and India (22,000 tonnes).

During the first four months this year, Vietnam continued to export with the biggest quantity of some 40,000 tonnes of pepper, fetching over $110 million.

The country’ export market has also been expanded from Asia to Europe. In 2009, Vietnam exported over 22,500 tonnes of white pepper to Europe and America, up 126 percent year-on-year, of which, European countries accounted for 41.5 percent whereas the figure was 34.2 percent in Asian region.

Presently, European countries have become Vietnam’s biggest pepper buyers.

Tags: Vietnam Pepper, Vietnam pepper exports