Chinese farm produce floods domestic market

Vietnamese merchants are importing more Chinese farm produce because the fruits and vegetables are very cheap and can bring them high profits.

Pham Quoc Phong, an importer of spring onion bulbs, ginger, alpinia, garlic and potatoes in HCM City, has been importing these kinds of products from China for the last two years. “I’ve never have worries about the prices. The exporters always offer produce at attractive prices,” Phong noted.

Just one month ago, Phong imported five containers of ginger at 2300 dong per kilo. When he ordered 15 containers, the exporter himself offered to discount the price to 2000 dong per kilo. Phong commented that Chinese exporters always offer discounts on big orders.

With a wholesale price of 2000 dong per kilo and a sale price of 40,000 dong per kilo, merchants are profiting wildly. That’s why they prefer selling imports, bringing in Chinese farm produce en masse while they do not care much about the quality.

Nga, a small merchant at Binh Dien Market in HCM City, once sold farm produce from Da Lat, but now she sells Chinese produce. Every day, she receives two containers with potatoes, carrots and ginger from the Lao Cai border gate.

According to Nga, Chinese produce is always very cheap and exporters will accept any size order. “They (exporters) will give you as much as you want, 30, or even 60 containers a day,” Nga remarked.

She added that “Chinese farm produce is very cheap, I think, because of the high production scale and high productivity. Chinese carrots are twice as big as Vietnamese carrots.”

Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted a Chinese source as saying that Chinese farm produce output has been increasing sharply over the last few years. The total output now is 105.2 million tons annually, accounting for 20 percent of the world’s total output.

China’s large big production scale allows for low prices. Australian Fuji apples have the price of $2400 per ton at Noi Bai airport, while Chinese apples are only $177 at Tan Thanh border gate in Lang Son province.

Under Vietnam’s commitments, Chinese farm exports to Vietnam can enjoy zero percent tariffs if exporters can show C/O (certificate of origin) Form E, which is provided by competent agencies of the export countries.

According to the Customs Sub-agency of the Saigon Port’s Zone 1, all Chinese farm produce through Cat Lat port have the form and enjoy import tariffs of zero percent. ASEAN farm produce still must pay a five percent tariff. As such, the low export price plus the low tariff both have helped Chinese farm produce easily penetrate Vietnam’s market.

Tags: China goods