Unstable agricultural exports

The market is difficult, prices are unstable, many key agricultural products such as rice, coffee, rubber... have seen sharp declines in exports. Meanwhile, the seafood industry must rely on the shrimp industry to recover because tra fish and tuna are decreasing.

Export rice prices are trending down due to pressure from Thailand to release rice from its temporary stockpile. Photo: Phuong Cham.

Anxious Thailand "clears" warehouse

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the amount of rice exported in the first 8 months of the year was nearly 4.7 million tons (reaching 2.05 billion USD), down 15.7% in volume (and down 18.4% in value) compared to the same period last year. Talking to Tien Phong, rice expert Nguyen Dinh Bich said that the downward trend in rice prices is clear, the extent of the problem will depend on Thailand's move to "release" rice stocks. "Recently, Thailand offered several sales, but sold little, and they also did not announce the winning bid price. If Thailand continues to reduce prices to release stocks (current public price is 435 USD/ton), India and Pakistan will also reduce prices, which will continue to put pressure on Vietnamese rice prices," Mr. Bich analyzed.

According to a rice trading enterprise in the South, currently the export price of rice is offered as low as 380 USD/ton (5% broken rice) and 350-355 USD/ton (25% broken rice), but few people are asking to buy, especially rice harvested from the Summer-Autumn crop. Meanwhile, the Vietnam Food Association (VFA) said that in July, the price of winter-spring rice was about 400 USD/ton, while summer-autumn rice was offered at 375-380 USD/ton. The world rice price has dropped sharply, so boosting rice exports to Africa (which Vietnam is focusing on exploiting) will face fierce competition from rice from India, Pakistan, and Thailand.

After Thailand's move to "clear" its warehouses, to avoid low domestic rice prices, VFA recently submitted a document to the Prime Minister, proposing to support an additional 2 months of interest rates, so that businesses can temporarily store an additional 300,000 tons from September 15 to October 15. VFA also proposed that the Prime Minister support an additional 1 month of interest rates for the purchase of 1 million tons of summer-autumn crop to prevent businesses from "selling out" rice to pay banks when due. Currently, businesses that temporarily store rice are suffering a loss of about 30 USD/ton.

Regarding coffee, due to many domestic enterprises facing difficulties in capital, coffee exports in the first 8 months of the year showed a significant decline. Although coffee prices increased slightly, the country exported more than 970 thousand tons, down over 23% in volume and 22.5% in value. In particular, the two largest coffee consuming markets of Vietnam, Germany and the US, also decreased sharply compared to last year, by nearly 20% and 30% respectively.

In addition, rubber products, which are heavily dependent on the Chinese market, are now also facing losses due to a sharp drop in export prices (an average decrease of 18% in the first 7 months of the year). In the first 8 months of the year, although export volume increased by 4.6% (638 thousand tons) compared to the same period, the turnover was only over 1.5 billion USD, a decrease of over 14%.

Goldfish also decreased

Despite facing many disadvantages due to anti-dumping and subsidy lawsuits in large markets such as the US and technical barriers in Japan, seafood exports still have positive growth. According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), after reaching an increase of nearly 13% in July, seafood exports continued to increase in August, estimated at 590 million USD. In total, seafood exports in the first 8 months of the year reached 4.1 billion USD, up 2.5% over the same period last year.

According to Mr. Truong Dinh Hoe - General Secretary of Vasep, due to the shortage of supply of black tiger shrimp due to the disease, whiteleg shrimp is still the savior of the shrimp industry in the coming months. With an average export of about 250 million USD/month, shrimp exports this year are likely to reach 2.5-2.6 billion USD, an increase of 12-16% compared to 2012 (2.24 billion USD).

Meanwhile, the “golden” fish in the Mekong Delta is tra fish; tuna is on a downward trend. Vasep forecasts that from now until the end of the year, exporting the above items will be difficult compared to last year, due to unstable raw material sources and unrecovered demand.

Talking to Tien Phong, Mr. Duong Ngoc Minh, Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director of Hung Vuong Joint Stock Company, said that 70% of pangasius is raised by processing enterprises; 30% by the people. However, due to the loss of pangasius farming since 2012, many places have given up. "The situation of severe shortage of raw materials has caused some enterprises to temporarily stop signing export orders in October. Pangasius exports this year will certainly not reach over 1.7 billion USD like last year," said Mr. Minh.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat has just requested his subordinate units to promptly propose solutions and remove obstacles to promote agricultural exports during difficult market times. With China - a large market with more than 1 billion people, many Vietnamese agricultural products are currently dependent on this market such as rice, rubber, dragon fruit, seafood... need to know how to exploit and promote exports. In 2012, China accounted for 5/27 billion USD of our country's agricultural export turnover.

According to Tienphong-PH