It is fact that low shrimp prices and high feed costs have driven many Vietnamese shrimp farmers to leave behind their business. Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has published a report in which it is mentioned that the area dedicated to shrimp ponds dropped to 566,000 hectares this year from 720,000 hectares last year.
The report also states that fewer countries are importing shrimp from Vietnam, slipping from 126 last year to 120 this year. The European Union remains the No. 1 importer of Vietnamese shrimp, followed by Japan, China and the United States. It is found that the outlook for the second half of 2009 is not at all promising. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization maintained that in general seafood prices will continue to fall in the next six months, making Vietnam’s seafood export target figure of USD 4.5 billion (EUR 3.2 billion) in 2009 difficult to achieve.
Trung Dinh Hoew, general secretary of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers, expressed his concern over the squeezing markets, the decreasing in shrimp farming and the sharp drop in shrimp prices. The issue is serious and this would hamper the Vietnamese shrimp industry very badly.
