Vietnam fears protectionism will affect farm produce exports

Vietnam in 2016 saw a high farm produce trade surplus of $7.6 billion, but big difficulties are still ahead, including returning protectionism with Brexit and US President-elect Donald Trump.



Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at a press conference on January 5 that protectionism has returned with countries especially trying to protect their farm produce.

Fifty percent of farm produce earnings in Vietnam rely on exports.

Analysts said that many countries have made heavy investments in agriculture as a measure to ensure food security and enhance competitiveness of their farm produce.

China, for example, has decided to invest $450 billion on agricultural restructuring. Thailand has invested $1.5 billion to fix market problems while Myanmar has also accelerated agricultural production restructuring after renovation.

The Washington Post wrote that President-elect Donald Trump has decided to nominate Lighthizer to serve as the US trade representative, commenting that Trump is bringing in the big guns to roll back free trade, and that Lighthizer could help Trump implement his agenda of restricting global commerce.

The year 2016, according to Cuong, was one of the most difficult for Vietnam’s agriculture with natural disasters occurring in many provinces which caused a loss of VND39 trillion, three times higher than the average damage in the last five years.

Meanwhile, the marine environment scandal in the four central provinces also dealt a strong blow to Vietnam’s agricultural production.

Vietnam, for the first time in history, saw a minus 0.18 percent in agricultural growth rate in the first six months of 2016.

Vietnam’s agriculture could only regain the growth in the second half of the year after a lot of efforts. The GDP grew by 1.36 percent, the export reached the record high of $32.1 billion, up by $1.7 billion over 2015, while the farm produce trade surplus reached $7.5 billion and 10 export items had the export turnover of $1 billion and higher.

Brackish shrimp exports alone brought $3.2 billion, while 200 animal feed companies churned out 25 million tons of products, which satisfied the demand of husbandry industry. 

MOIT said export turnover from vegetables and fruits may reach $3 billion in the time to come.

A report released in mid-2016 on the 2013-2015 agriculture restructuring plan showed that only one percent of enterprises have invested in agriculture and 99 percent of are either small and or very small.

Mai Chi  vietnamnet