The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) announced that Vietnamese Tra fish exports to the European Union (EU) reached USD 37.5 million this August, an almost 23 percent decline from a year ago.
August was the sixth continuous month that Tra fish export earnings from the EU market declined. Since this May Tra fish exports have reduced by more than 20 percent per month due to the low demand and the weakened euro.
The VASEP said that Vietnamese Tra fish export revenues stood at USD 1.1 billion in the first eight months of this year, a 0.5 percent reduction from the same months last year, largely because exports to the EU, Vietnam's major Tra fish buyer, fell 20 percent to only USD 291 million.
The latest issue of Globefish Highlights published in mid-August by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that Vietnamese Tra fish exports to the EU including most major markets like Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Belgium and Italy dropped sharply in both value and volume in the first half of this year.
VASEP also said that due to misleading comments, EU consumers had misunderstood Tra fish farming in Vietnam. They did not really know that Vietnamese export Tra fish had been verified more seriously than any other kind of seafood in the world.
According to Globefish, although people have stopped downplaying Tra fish, misunderstanding about the quality of Tra fish had remained. Prior to the antibiotic Tra fish scare, it took consumers many years to return to buying farmed tuna, and even now tuna remains unpopular in several regions.
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