For domestic fisheries sector in Vietnam 2008 has been a difficult year with ten storms and four tropical depressions on the Eastern Sea, high prices of fuel, materials and equipment for aquaculture, fish catching and fierce market competition. However, the sector registered high growth. Most notably, seafood exports hit an all-time high in 2008.
It is informed that in 2008 Vietnam’s total seafood volume is estimated at 4.58 million tonnes, the highest ever figure. This includes 2.45 million tonnes from aquaculture, up 15.3 percent against 2007 and 2.13 million tonnes from catching. Especially, the sector bagged home US$4.5 million from exports, up US$700 million or 19.6 percent against last year.
According to the figures shrimp maintains the top seafood export product. The country exported over 176,000 tonnes of shrimps in the first eleven months of the year, earning US$1.5 billion, up 20.4 percent in quantity and 9 percent in export turnover compared to the same period last year. It is told that the new export markets such as Russia, Ukraine, and Africa also saw high growths, opening up a good opportunity to explore new export markets of the Vietnam’s seafood sector.
The stable growth of the domestic seafood sector in 2008 has greatly contributed to the general development of the agricultural-fisheries and forestry sector as well as the national socio-economic stability.
