Vietnam will harvest much more shrimp in 2016 but its total export earnings will remain on par with last year and lower than its recent annual average.
Nguyen Xuan Cuong, Minister of Vietnam Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) said Vietnam’s shrimp exports are expected to achieve more than USD 3 billion (EUR 2.7 billion), while total seafood exports will exceed USD 7 billion (EUR 6.2 billion).
According to the minister, this year, the area for shrimp farming is expected to reach 660,000 hectares with a total production of 680,000 metric tons (MT).
In 2015, Vietnam harvested a total of 600,473 MT of shrimp, comprising 255,873 MT of black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) – up 4 percent year-on-year, and 344,600 MT of whiteleg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) – down 3.7 percent. The Southeast Asian country’s shrimp exports, meanwhile, reached almost USD 3 billion, down 25.3 percent compared with 2014, states figures published by the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters (VASEP).
Historically, Vietnam’s shrimp exports achieve a value of USD 3.5 billion (EUR 3.1 billion) to USD 4 billion (EUR 3.6 billion).
Cuong believes the shrimp industry provides many opportunities, but said Vietnam must increase the farming areas that focus on shrimp production and also ramp up its broodstock production. With regards to the latter, the current broodstock only meets 20 percent of domestic demand, but the minister believes this could be increased to 100 percent in the next 3-5 years.
At the same time, Vietnam’s three largest import markets – the United States, Japan and the EU – account for 60 percent of its total shrimp export value. But with higher antidumping duty imposed by the United States, Cuong wants Vietnam to expand its exports to other markets.
Most recently, authorities announced they were looking to create an export market for frozen raw shrimp in Australia and that in the fourth-quarter of 2016, a delegation of Australian experts will conduct a fact-finding tour to establish whether Vietnam meets its production requirements.
In the first eight months of this year, Vietnam harvested 107,007 MT of whiteleg shrimp, an increase of 4.1 percent, and 135,844 MT of black tiger shrimp, down 10 percent year-on-year. Thanks to favorable weather conditions, the total farming area in the Mekong Delta dedicated whiteleg shrimp production increased 17.3 percent year-on-year to 55,254 hectares and the area focusing on black tiger shrimp increased 2.1 percent to 561,504 hectares.
