Vietnam shrimp exports sluggish, but to recover along with prices

A shrimp farmer smiles as she shows shrimp she harvested from her pond in the My Xuyen district in southern Vietnam. Photo by AFP

Vietnam’s shrimp exports last April were worth only $275.2, a 0.4 percent drop year-on-year, according to VASEP.

Foreign markets still have a lot of imported shrimp in stock and would not buy more now, which explains the lack of demand for Vietnamese shrimp, local newspaper Tuoi Tre quoted Truong Dinh Hoe, general secretary of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP ), as saying. 

Vo Thanh Sang, a shrimp farmer in the southern Soc Trang Province, said he recently sold his harvest for VND70,000 ($3) per kilogram, the lowest price in 10 years.

“Each pond has four to five tons of shrimp. So if I sell my shrimp at the current price, I will lose VND40-50 million. I cannot afford that.”

"In addition, many Vietnamese shrimp exporters have begun to sign large orders for the holidays at the end of 2018 so shrimp prices are expected to increase again in August and September this year," Undercurrent News, an independent seafood business news outlet, quoted VASEP as saying. 

There would not be excess supply in the market in upcoming quarters because other shrimp producing countries such as India, Bangladesh, and Thailand have over-harvested, it said.

Though exports dropped in April it said they were worth $1 billion in the first four months, a 14 percent year-on-year jump.

Exports were higher to South Korea (by 34.4 percent), Australia (26), the U.S. (1.4), the E.U. (11), and China (4).

Last year shrimp exports had been worth $3.85 billion, an increase of 22 percent.

Vietnam is the world’s third-largest exporter, and it targets exports of $10 billion by 2025.