The People's Committee of Dong Thap Province, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), held a conference to summarize the pangasius industry in 2022 and solutions and tasks in 2023 associated with a series of events of the first pangasius festival on the afternoon of December 16, in Hong Ngu City of Dong Thap Province.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien said that the pangasius industry overcame the difficulties caused by global supply chain disruption in 2022. Pangasius export turnover was expected to reach US$2.4 billion, up about 70 percent over the same period in 2021, surpassing the peak of $2.26 billion in 2018. In 2022, seafood was a commodity with outstanding growth, with export turnover of the whole industry estimated to exceed $11 billion, up 25 percent over the same period in 2021, the highest level ever.
According to Mr. Phung Duc Tien, currently, Dong Thap is the locality with the largest pangasius farming area and the highest output in the Mekong Delta region. Dong Thap has selected pangasius as one of the five key commodities in the agricultural restructuring project. The province currently has 28 enterprises operating in the seafood processing sector (mainly processing frozen pangasius fillets for export), with a total design capacity of more than 500,000 tons per year, attracting more than 25,000 laborers.
