Seafood industry in Vietnam has become an issue of debate. The authority has to choose between two options either to re-organise fish farming to become self-sufficient in seafood materials, or import seafood materials to run local seafood processing workshops. Te reach a concrete solution a survey was conducted by the Cuu Long River Delta Development Institute under Can Tho University and Scotland’s Stirling University, which shows that in the last five consecutive years, fish output has been increasing steadily, while fish prices have fluctuated continuously.
It is fact that the profit of farmers in An Giang, Dong Thap provinces and Can Tho city decreased from VND2.8mil/tonne in the years before 2003 to over VND1mil/tonne in 2005 due to higher production costs. It is evident that seafood processing workshops did not make heavy investments in cold storage. Big workshops now have the cold storage capacity of 10,000 tonnes/storehouse only, which explains why they cannot purchase fish from farmers in big quantities.
It is found that fish farming is destroying the environment. Every year, aquaculture ponds in the Cuu Long River Delta create 500mil cu m of mud and waste. Every cu m of pond needs to produce 8kg of fish, needs 24 cu m of water to renew the ponds’ water. Every cu m of water from an aquaculture pond needs to be treated with 0.033-0.035kg of COD. Experts believe that Vietnam should consider importing materials for domestic processing and re-exporting.
Even the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) also proposed that state management agencies import $2bil worth of seafood materials in order to raise the exports to $7.5-8bil by 2020. On the other hand it is found that is Vietnam decides to maintain fish farming, it should strive for the sustainable development of the industry.
