According to the latest statistics of General Statistics Department, Vietnam’s seafood volume in the first 5 months 2009 estimated to reach 1.736 million tons, above 4.4 percent from the same period last year. In there fish volume reached 1,33 million tons and shrimp volume reached 149,600 tons, up 4 percent and 3.8 percent respectively. Aquaculture products in the first 5 months was estimated to reached 748,200 tons, dropped 0.5 percent compared to the same time 2008 due to the increase of feed price and farmers encountered difficulties to approach subsidized loan of governement so that they felt unsecure to start farming.
Tran Anh Dung, director of Nati Food Company in Vung Tau City, told that in order to overcome difficulties, his company had speeded up production by focussing on old customers and trying to contact with potential buyers that company used to ignore before. He added that the main aim of his company for this period is to accept loss to maintain production and to create jobs for workers. As a result, export value of company increased 20 percent compared to the first quarter 2009.
Ngo Van Ich, director of Nha Trang Food informed that the shortage of material has caused the continuous increase of material price. If previously price of fish was 3,000 VND/kg, now it is up to 3,600 VND/kg, some kinds of fishes up to 4,600 VND/kg. besides the difficulties of material, currently enterprises have to face the electricity issue. Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development had sent proposal to Ministry of Finance to request this ministry to minimize import tax of aquatic materials that Vietnam don’t have or have but quantity is small to create condition for enterprises import aquatic materials for export processing, create jobs, decrease costs and improve competitiveness but not harmful to domestic farming and exploiting industry.
