Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Vietnam’s prime minister, has called on the country’s shrimp industry to deliver an export value of USD 10 billion (EUR 9.4 billion) by 2025.
Speaking at a conference on shrimp production last week, Phuc said the shrimp industry should work to account for 10 percent of the country’s GDP and asked the State Bank of Vietnam to instruct commercial banks to provide sufficient capital for the industry, especially for high-tech breeding systems. He also assigned the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to quickly design an action program for the shrimp industry’s development.
Furthermore, Phuc reminded the industry to diversify its export markets to avoid risks stemming from a heavy reliance on a single market, while assuring the sector that the government would work with it to protect its legitimate rights and benefits in price-dumping lawsuits.
Vietnam has become one of the largest shrimp exporting countries in the world, with the product accounting for almost half of its total seafood export revenue. While final figures have not been published, its shrimp exports for 2016 were expected to total USD 3.1 billion (EUR 2.9 billion), up 3.3 percent compared to 2015.
Also speaking at the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung said that Vietnam’s shrimp industry still had a lot scope for further development – due to both the large global demand for shrimp and the large area suitable for farming shrimp in Vietnam, particularly in the Mekong Delta.
Vietnam currently has about 700,000 hectares of brackish water shrimp farming sites, including 95,000 hectares of industrial shrimp farms and more than 600,000 hectares of extensive farms with low productivity.
Dung recommended that MARD should review relevant institutions to revise and support the shrimp industry.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s Directorate of Fisheries under MARD has set a seafood export revenue goal of USD 7.1 billion (EUR 6.7 billion) for this year, an increase of USD 100 million (EUR 94 million) compared to the 2016 total. The agency has targeted a total fishery production output of 6.85 million metric tons (MT) for the year, including 3.8 million MT from aquaculture.
