Avocado fruits were packaged for export. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) - Accelerating agricultural restructuring towards large-scaleand high-tech production became critical for the sector, which involves 70percent of the country’s population but contributes just below 20 percent ofthe country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
At a recent working session with the PrimeMinister’s economic consulting team, Minister of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment Nguyen Xuan Cuong said the agricultural sector was facing growingcompetition and technical barriers.
The minister said the restructuring processhelped improve the production capacity significantly with many products now insurplus.
However, small-scale production and lowproductivity were still problems that needed a resolution, Cuong said, addingVietnam has 8.6 million farmer households and 78 million fields.
The minister asked the PM’s team to study andpropose policies to reduce the proportion of labour in agriculture, attractinvestments in infrastructure, especially in the irrigation system, developmarkets and improve land policies.
According to director of the Central Institutefor Economic Management Nguyen Dinh Cung, it was important to removebottlenecks in land policies, especially land limit, to encourage investmentsand promote large-scale production.
Truong Dinh Tuyen, former Minister of Commerce(now the Ministry of Industry and Trade) said Vietnam should develop the foodand food-processing industry but be selective as many fresh products could besold for high prices.
In addition to this, developing standards andpromoting their application in production as well as enhancing quality controlto improve product quality were critical to boost exports with high-addedvalue.
The agriculture ministry’s statistics showedthat Vietnam earned 3.09 billion USD from exporting agro-forestry-fisheryproducts in January, a rise of 25.9 percent over the same month last year.
Agro-forestry-fishery exports hit 33 billion USDin 2017, representing a rise of 13.8 percent against the previous year.-VNA
VNA
