Farm, seafood exports up 33% 33rise 33.3%

Export value of agricultural, forest and seafood products registered a year-on-year increase of 33.3 per cent to US$5.4 billion for the first quarter of this year, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Export value surged by 56.2 per cent to $3.4 billion for farming products, by 22 per cent to $1.1 billion for seafood products and by 1.2 per cent to $809 million for forestry products compared with the same period last year.

Nguyen Viet Chien, director of the ministry’s Information Technology and Statistics Centre, said almost all exports for farming, forestry and seafood sectors gained increases in export volume and value in the first quarter compared with the same period last year.

Rubber exports for example doubled in value to $798 million and by 50 per cent in volume to 179,000 tonnes.

After a year of reduction in both export volume and value in 2010, coffee exports jumped sharply by 46 per cent in volume to 504,000 tonnes and doubled in value to $1 billion in the first quarter.

Nguyen Nam Hai, general secretary of the Viet Nam Coffee Club, said a major reason for the increases was a loss in coffee harvests among large global coffee producers due to climate change and natural disasters.

Meanwhile, local rice exporters saw a slight increase in the value of rice exports for the first quarter of this year. Viet Nam exported 1.6 million tonnes of rice, earning $823 million in the first quarter. The exports increased by 13.3 per cent in volume and by 2.9 per cent in value.

However, rice exports could face difficulties in registering as sharp an increase as 2010 due to a recovery in wheat exports on the world market, despite optimistic rice export figures in the first quarter, Chien said.

At present, Thailand and Viet Nam have cut export prices for their rice by 9.6 per cent against the same period last year to $505 per tonne to encourage exports, he said. So far, Indonesia was the leading rice export market for Viet Nam, accounting for 39.2 per cent of the total rice export volume because the Philippines had not yet imported Vietnamese rice as scheduled.

However, some key farming products had increased in export value but had reduced or unchanged export volume, Chien said.

During the first quarter, cashew exports surged 21.7 per cent in value to $149 million but fell 9.8 per cent in volume to 28,000 tonnes compared with the same period of last year. — VNS

Tags: Vietnam farm exports