Vietnamese fruits reach out to global markets

Vietnamese fruits reach out to global markets

In 2020, it is much likely that Viet Nam’s fruit exports continues to make spectacular breakthroughs as the door to some demanding markets, such as Europe, the United States, Japan and Taiwan (China), has become more and more widely open.

Specifically, in December 2019, Japan officially opened the door for Vietnamese lychee. Four months earlier, Australia also allowed fresh Vietnamese longan to be exported to the country. At the same time, Vietnamese mangoes were granted the export license to the Chilean market. 

Last February, mangoes became the sixth fruit of Viet Nam to successfully conquer the U.S. market, after lychee, longan, rambutan, star apple and dragon fruit, making the U.S. the 40^th export market of Vietnamese mangoes.

Currently, the proportion of fruits shipped to the fastidious market accounts for more than 30%, with a number of market reporting good growth, including the U.S., the Republic of Korea, Australia and Japan, and others.

Accordingly, Viet Nam’s fruit exports to the U.S. reached US$137.7 million, up 9.2%; to the RoK US$119.4 million, up 14.2%; and to Japan US$112.4 million, up 14.4%.

The Agricultural Products Processing and Market Development Department said this is a bright spot in the context of a series of farm produce encountering difficulties in exports. Particularly, Viet Nam's fresh fruits have satisfied all import conditions to enter the demanding markets with strict phytosanitary and food safety requirement, such as the U.S., Australia, Japan and the RoK.

To overcome these barriers and challenges, the fruit industry has proactively reorganized the production process over the past years. Local farmers have voluntarily participated in cooperatives and initially formed large-scale production areas according to food safety standards.

Scientific institutions have also worked closely with farmers in building many models for safe vegetable production.

 As a result, the fruit products from cooperatives have met the standards on design and quality, and received the VietGAP/GlobalGAP certification, thereby increasing the persuasiveness and trust in the most fastidious markets, such as the US, Japan and Europe.

Vietnamese fruits have now been present in more than 40 markets worldwide.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnamese fruits have now been exported to more than 40 countries and territories, while the situation of exporting fresh fruits to fastidious markets is getting better.

There remains a promising outlook for Viet Nam’s vegetable and fruit exports in the future – possibly reaching a value of US$10 billion per year, as the world’s annual vegetable and fruit import turnover is very large, about US$ 240 billion.  

To achieve this prospect, Viet Nam’s fruit and vegetable industry is implementing processes to meet the strict requirements of the import markets, while seeking to increase the value of Vietnamese fruits by penetrating into the demanding markets./.

By Vien Nhu