In January-June, the total export value was estimated to reach 19.77 billion USD, up 2.2 percent.

Nguyen Van Viet, head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Planning Department, attributed the slow growth to a decline in prices of many key agricultural products compared to the same period last year, and a fall in export turnover to China.

Some key agricultural products seeing a drop in prices are peppercorn (26.5 percent), rubber (5.9 percent), cashew nuts (21.6 percent), coffee (11.8 percent), and rice (16.7 percent).

At the conference to review the sector’s performance in the first half of this year and deploy tasks the six remaining months held in Hanoi on June 28, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong urged the sector to focus on areas that there is room for development such as forestry economy, and seafood, particularly aquaculture.

He underlined the need to accelerate the restructuring of the cultivation and breeding sectors with a focus on livestock farming that, he said, should exert every effort to prevent the African swine fever to reduce losses and ensure the growth pace. The development of poultry and cattle in a sustainable manner is required.

To meet the goal for 2019, the cultivation sector will maintain rice output equal to that of 2018 while promoting the production of vegetables, fruits and industrial trees.

Meanwhile, the breeding sector will increase the development of poultry by 13-14 percent, production of eggs over 12 percent, beef 7.8 percent and seafood 6.5 percent.

The agriculture sector targets 43 billion USD in export value in 2019.

The export value of wood and wood products reached nearly 5 billion USD in the first half of 2019, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The US was the biggest importer of the country’s wood and wood products. During January-May, the export turnover to the US accounted for 45 percent of the total.

In the time ahead, the timber industry will continue working to improve transparency by applying good production process to ensure sustainable development.

 

Including non-timber forest products, total earnings from shipping forestry products abroad in the first half of this year came to around 5.3 billion USD, a year-on-year surge of nearly 20 percent.

The US, Japan, the European Union, China and the Republic of Korea remained the largest importers of Vietnamese forest products, accounting for some 87 percent of the industry’s total export value.

To date, Vietnam maintained its position as the leading exporter of forest products in Southeast Asia, the second largest in Asia and the fifth in the world.

Last year, Vietnam raked in some 9.3 billion USD from shipping forest products to foreign nations. The country eyes 10.5 billion USD in export value this year.

Vietnam is now home to 4,500 enterprises specializing in processing and exporting wood and forest products. They include more than 700 foreign-invested businesses, most having large production scales using advanced technology.

The forestry sector has been demanded to take measures to achieve the exports target of 11 billion USD for this year.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong made the request at a meeting of the Vietnam Administration of Forestry (VNForest) in Hanoi on July 5.

He asked the sector to perfect institutions so as to implement the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (VPA/FLEGT) between Vietnam and the European Union (EU), which took effect on June 1, 2019.

Cuong said under this agreement, many parties, including people, society, the state as well as foreign partners, will take part in managing the export of forestry products.

Each agency and official must improve their awareness of the agreement to seek benefits for the sector, the official added.

Vietnam earned nearly 5.23 billion USD from forestry exports in the first half of this year, up almost 20 percent year on year.

According to Deputy Director General of VNForest Pham Van Dien, to achieve the exports target of 11 billion USD, the sector will increase coordination with other ministries and sectors to prevent trade frauds by some exporting companies and strictly control the import of timber from high-risk countries.

It will also enhance cooperation with localities to multiply the successful connections between wood processing companies and afforestation households, thus ensuring the legality of domestic timber supply. This will help increase the added value and reduce production costs for Vietnamese wood products, he added.

At the meeting, VNForest reported the forestry production value grew 4.53 percent in the second quarter of this year, 0.08 percent higher than that in the same period last year.

It said amidst the declines in both export volume and value of some agricultural products, the forestry sector’s stable growth has made it a “helping hand” of Vietnam’s agriculture.

Aquatic exports likely to hit 10 billion USD in 2019

Vietnam is likely to earn 10 billion USD from exporting aquatic products in 2019, according to the Directorate of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Acting Director General of the directorate Nguyen Ngoc Oai said on July 4 that in the remainder of 2019, the sector will strive to reach a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4.65 percent, production value growth of 4.69 percent, and export turnover of 10.5 billion USD.

It will also pay more attention to removing the European Commission (EC)’s yellow card warning.

From now to the end of October, the sector will make all-out efforts to implement the four recommendations by the EC related to the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, Oai said, adding that the EC inspection team will come to Vietnam in early November.

Director of the ministry’s Aquaculture Production Department Nhu Van Can said the shrimp sector will take a number of measures to reduce the production costs and increase competitiveness.

He said the sector has plenty of room for development but it should focus on improving the quality to overcome technical barriers of choosy markets.

According to the Directorate of Fisheries, aquatic exports in the first six months of 2019 were estimated at 4 billion USD, a year-on-year rise of 0.7 percent.