Vietnam is planning to increase production of lobster in the country’s central region, with the aim of upping its exports to China and other Asian markets.
The country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Area is seeking opinion from the public regarding its draft project to develop the farming and exports of lobster in the country, the ministry’s General Department of Fisheries said in a statement earlier this week.
The ministry targets achieving a lobster output of 3,000 metric tons (MT) by 2025, from about 2,400 MT in 2019. It also aims to earn an export value of USD 200 million (EUR 184 million) by 2025, which would be an increase of about 15 percent per year.
The project will be implemented in the nine coastal provinces from Quang Binh to Binh Thuan.
The Agriculture Ministry said it will prioritize imports of advanced farming technologies from other countries to help develop the lobster production in a sustainable way.
The draft document showed that the number of cages rose 18 percent per year, while output increased 6.2 percent per year from 2010 to 2019.
Currently, Phu Yen and Khanh Hoa are two major lobster-producing provinces in Vietnam. The two provinces together produced 2,273 MT of lobster last year, accounting for 95 percent of the country’s total output.
Most of the production is exported to China, a huge market close to Vietnam, with the rest destined for domestic consumption.
As other seafood products, lobster has also been heavily impacted by lower demand from China due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months. Prices for seafood in Vietnam fell again in March because demand in China had not yet recovered following the initial plunge in demand caused by the virus outbreak.
In early February, prices of lobster raised in Van Phong Bay in Khanh Hoa declined to about VND 600,000 (USD 25, EUR 23) per kilogram, down from around VND 1.5 million (USD 64, EUR 58) per kilogram previously.
Photo courtesy of vivanvu/Shutterstock
