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A working session between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and EC’s inspection team in Hanoi on October 18 on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) |
In the meeting, Deputy General Secretary of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) informed that after considerable drops in export turnovers, in the last 2 months, the Vietnamese seafood industry has seen a brighter picture.
Particularly, for many months in the past, the export turnovers of this industry continuously experienced negative values of 30-40 percent compared to this time in previous years. The exports to the US market even decreased by more than a half in April 2023. However, lately, this drop has gradually slowed down to only 22 percent, which is rather acceptable as opposed to the reduction of 27 percent at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
International seafood markets have shown signs of recovery, bringing about favorable conditions for the Vietnamese seafood industry, even though it still has to face various challenges from a fierce competition against Thailand, India, and Ecuador, whose shrimp export prices are 20-30 percent lower than the Vietnamese ones.
Meanwhile, the EU has not removed the ‘yellow card’ for Vietnamese seafood yet. They even asked that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development tighten monitoring food hygiene and safety in exported seafood.
Vietnam’s Trade Counselor in Belgium and in the EU Tran Ngoc Quan reported that after the visit to Vietnam this October, the inspection team of the European Commission (EC) highly appreciated the efforts and determination of the country in having the ‘yellow card’ lifted.
Nevertheless, the EC commented that there are still certain on-site problems. Therefore, Counselor Quan proposed that functional agencies should better control and effectively deliver instructions on food hygiene and safety. The EU stated that within the next 6 months, if Vietnam shows signs of correcting wrongdoings, the EC will consider removing this ‘yellow card’ before the EU presents it in the parliament voting.
On the same day, in the meeting about solutions to stop the exhaustive exploitation of aquatic resources in Ca Mau Province, the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development informed that from 2005 to May 2013, the specialized inspection team of the province conducted various checking rounds and detected 309 law violations. They confiscated 132 battery packs, 226 electrofishing tools, and about 4,500m of electrical wire. They issued administrative fines of over VND2.7 billion (US$110,000).
From 2013 to September 2023, the functional forces pinpointed another 911 cases of illegally using electrofishing tools for aquatic exploitation. They fined law offenders over VND3 billion ($122,000).
