Vietnam’s lobster exports to China in the first five months of2022 had a strong increase of nearly 29 times on year to 108 million USD.
VASEP Secretary General Truong Dinh Hoe said the main market for Vietnameselobster was still China.
Last year, China's market was "frozen" due to COVID-19, the lobsterexport value from Vietnam to this market was very low, so this year, the growthof the lobster export value to China reached a high record but the export valuewas not such a high figure.
The export value of lobster accounted for only about 5.5% of the shrimpindustry's exports and only a few enterprises participated in exportinglobster, Hoe told Nguoi lao dong (TheLabourer) newspaper.
Meanwhile, Vietnam's shrimp exports in the first five months of this yearreached 275 million USD, up 101% over the same period last year. In May, theshrimp exports reached a turnover of 88 million USD, up 126% on the year.
VASEP said that shrimp supply from China decreased in the past three years dueto the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, China implemented a zeroCOVID policy, causing many factories in this country to be closed andproduction to be stalled.
Therefore, China has fallen into a shortage of aquatic products for domesticconsumption and export processing.
The increasing demand for seafood imports is attracting more Vietnameseenterprises to export here despite the challenges.
According to VASEP, Vietnam's total seafood exports to China in the first fivemonths of this year reached 771 million USD, up 91% over the same period lastyear. The two key products were pangasius accounting for 48% of exports andshrimp accounting for 35%.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade said it would continue to work closely withthe Ministry of Foreign Affairs and related agencies to amend and supplementlegal documents on the land border line between Vietnam and China as well asother legal documents, facilitating sustainable development of border tradeactivities.
Along with that, the ministry would continue to coordinate with ministries,sectors and localities in developing market and improving product quality anddesigns.
It would also orient local businesses to promote official export activities toChina instead of trade activities via border gates and call on logisticsservice enterprises to support agricultural, aquatic and fruit enterprises,including priority for the preservation of fruits, and reduction of storage,warehousing, transportation, loading and unloading costs.
In the first half of this year, China was the second largest export market ofVietnamese farm produce with a total value of about 4.97 billion USD, up 5.9%and accounting for 17.8% of national agricultural, forestry and seafood exportvalue.
In the past months, the ministry regularly cooperated with China authorities toimprove the customs clearance of goods at border gates of the two nations.Those facilitated export goods, especially agricultural products exported from Vietnamduring the period of main harvest season./.