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Roundup: Vietnam's seafood, garment exports face difficulties in hitting year-end goals

Xinhua, October 10, 2016 Adjust font size:

Vietnam's seafood and garment, textile industries are said to be facing many challenges to reach their year-end export targets, said local experts.

According to the Vietnam Association Seafood Producers and Exporters (VASEP), in the first nine months of 2016, Vietnam's seafood export value saw stable growth.

Seafood exports brought home more than 4.9 billion U.S. dollars, surging 4.3 percent year-on-year. The U.S., Japan, China and the Republic of Korea were the four main importers of Vietnamese seafood, making up 53.7 percent of the total export revenue.

However, VASEP General Secretary Truong Dinh Hoe warned that the country's shrimp export volume to the U.S. might remain stagnant or even reduce in the last three months of this year.

Earlier, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided to raise its anti-dumping tax on Vietnamese shrimp at rate of 5 times higher than previously suggested.

Meanwhile, local exporters fear of impacts from U.S. anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese catfish and the U.S. catfish inspection program, the association said. At the same time, catfish exports to the European Union (EU) grew slowly in the first nine months as having to compete with other kinds of white-meat fish.

Tran Van Linh, chairman of local Thuan Phuoc Seafood Joint Stock Company, said hitting the year-end export target of 7.1 billion U.S. dollars will require great effort from the nation's fishery sector.

By the end of this year, the industry will almost certainly experience growth, but there might not be many more large export contracts signed, Linh said, citing that enterprises already have orders for Vietnamese seafood products for the Christmas and New Year occasions from main markets.

Previously, Vietnam targeted to earn 7.1 billion U.S. dollars in export value of seafood for 2016, posting seven percent year-on-year increase.

Same scenario is expected in the garment, textile sector. According to a report by Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS), in January-September period, Vietnam earned 21.11 billion U.S. dollars from shipping garment, textile abroad, up 6 percent year-on-year, accounting for 68 percent of the whole year's estimate.

During the period, exports to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and EU member states saw slight growth or even declines.

VITAS forecast that in 2016, the country's garment, textile exports will reach 28-29 billion U.S. dollars, up five percent year-on-year, hardly being able to realize the earlier target of 30-31 billion U.S. dollars.

In order to reach the 29-billion-U.S. dollar export revenue, the country must pocket at least 2.5 billion U.S. dollars each month of the last three months, up 8-10 percent compared to the same period of 2015. Endit