Seafood exports to US face tough recovery

Việt Nam’s seafood exports to the United States have reduced in the first five months. - Photo vietnamtradeoffice

HÀ NỘI – Việt Nam’s seafood exports to the United States reduced in the first five months, according to the Việt Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

Also, it will face difficulty in recovering in the next few months, VASEP said.

The nation saw a year-on-year growth of 7.5 per cent in the total export value of seafood to US$2.76 billion in the first five months, but the export value of local seafood products to the US fell by 12.7 per cent year-on-year to $461 million, the association said.

The reduction made the US only the second largest export market for Việt Nam in the first five months of this year, against the first place in the same period last year, it said. The fall was partly due to the anti-dumping duty on Vietnamese tra fish and shrimp in the US market.

The exports of Vietnamese seafood products to the US was expected to face difficultly in recovering by the end of this year, because the US inspection programme for catfish would be effective September 2017. Also, with Donald Trump becoming the US President, the currency market has seen many changes, and the new US government may increase tax, and technical and protection barriers, the association said.

During the first five months, the EU was the third largest export market for Vietnamese seafood products, but still had a reduction of 0.7 per cent in the export value.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese seafood products reached a year-on-year growth of 29.3 per cent, 20.1 per cent and 26.1 per cent to Japan, China and South Korea, respectively.

VASEP said tra fish and shrimp exports had slow growth because the material supply for shrimp and tra fish was limited, and prices for the material of those products increased sharply.

Therefore, enterprises had changed the structure of seafood export products and markets to promote exports of tuna, squid, octopus and other seafood products.

Việt Nam’s tuna exports gained a year-on-year increase of 20 per cent to $216 million in the first five months due to the growth of exports to traditional markets such as the US and the EU.

In the first five months, the nation’s squid and octopus exports rose by 39 per cent to $199 million against the same period last year.