Vietnam: Earning $1 billion, but fruit exporters can’t get good night’s sleep
Vietnam, for the first time, earned $1 billion from fruit exports in 2013. A lot of Vietnamese fruits have become favoured in the world market, including dragon fruit, mango and rambutan.
However, farmers and exporters have been warned that the export turnover growth may be unsustainable. Market analysts have pointed out that Vietnam’s fruits have been exported mostly to China across the border line, which consumes 64.5 percent of the total export turnover. The heavy reliance on the market would make Vietnam suffer once Chinese importers suddenly stop importing fruits from Vietnam.
Pitaya is an example. The pitaya growing area in Vietnam only accounts for 3.1 percent of the total fruit cultivation area, but pitaya bring 55 percent of the total export turnover. Vietnam is the biggest pitaya exporter in the world. However, its major targeted market remains China, which consumes 77 percent of the total output. Meanwhile, only four percent is exported to Europe, 3 percent to the US and 1.5 percent to Japan.
Meanwhile, many other countries, including Thailand, the Philippines, US, Japan and Israel, have been trying to grow pitaya as well. China has just successfully grown pitaya on a 20,000 hectare land area in Guangdong and Guangxi.The pitaya area in the two Chinese provinces alone is approximately equal to the total growing area in Vietnam (25,000 hectares).
Dr. Ngo Ngoc Trung Lap from the SOFRI, a research institute, said that Vietnam only can take the advantage as the only grower in the world, while it is still weak at technology and brand. These would be the big disadvantages for Vietnam, if the other countries with advanced technologies also grow the fruits. Also according to Lap, one of the important things Vietnam needs to do to penetrate more deeply into the world market is obtaining the agreements with imports markets about the phytosanitary.
Source: vietnamnet.vn