Prime Minister directs to improve the value chain of Vietnamese medicinal herbs

Affirming the great development potential of Vietnamese medicinal herbs, the Prime Minister raised the question: “Why can’t we develop such great potential? There must be difficulties and obstacles that we need to discover and take more drastic measures.”

Affirming the great potential of Vietnamese medicinal herbs, the Prime Minister hopes that the upcoming conference will contribute to promoting the country's strengths in developing medicinal herbs. Photo: VGP/Quang Hieu

On the afternoon of March 29, at the Government headquarters, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had a working session with relevant ministries, branches and the Vietnam Association of Medicinal Materials (Vimames) on the development of the medicinal materials industry, including discussing preparations for organizing a national conference on this field.

At the meeting, Vimames Chairman Ta Ngoc Dung reported to the Prime Minister that the demand for medicinal herbs in our country is very large. We have witnessed that during the subsidy period, despite many difficulties, the product "Cao Sao Vang" was exported for over 2 million USD, a valuable amount of foreign currency for the country's development. However, in recent years, we have imported a large amount, up to 70-80% of medicinal herbs. Quality management is still inadequate, lacking a national data system.

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Some opinions at the meeting agreed that the potential of the medicinal herbs industry is very large. We have many valuable traditional medicines, so in order for medicinal herbs to develop, there needs to be an outlet for the products. In addition, it is necessary to develop medicinal herbs according to the value chain, from planting, processing to the market; pay attention to applying high technology to production. The State needs to have support policies such as organizing medicinal herbs production centers in regions in the country when, according to the opinion of a Vimames member, "farmers are wondering who to sell medicinal herbs to, what standards to sell them to and how to sell them" and to have an outlet, quality must be put first, this is the soul of competition in this field. In addition, the development of medicinal herbs must be associated with the development of traditional medicine, combining Eastern medicine with Western medicine.

Affirming the great development potential of Vietnamese medicinal herbs, the Prime Minister raised the question: “Why can’t we develop such great potential? There must be difficulties and obstacles that we need to discover and take more drastic measures.”

Therefore, the Prime Minister emphasized the significance of a national conference on medicinal plant development like some recent thematic conferences on rice, shrimp, etc. Because according to the Prime Minister, whatever is beneficial to the people should be organized well, taking advantage of the comparative conditions that Vietnam has to develop some types of crops and livestock, improving people's lives.

The Que Phong District Oriental Medicine Association (Nghe An) processed and packaged yellow flower tea to supply the market. Photo: Nguyen Nguyen

This is also the reason why the Prime Minister convened today's meeting to listen to opinions with the aim of organizing a national conference on medicinal herbs to achieve the highest efficiency, and to propose the best methods and measures.

Agreeing with the opinions at the meeting, the Prime Minister emphasized the policies that need to be focused on clarifying such as production planning, how to organize production and processing because if it is done roughly, it will be difficult to preserve and have low efficiency.

In addition, organize the output and consumption of medicinal products, including both domestic and export. The Prime Minister agrees with the view that "the driving force for medicinal development comes from market demand", taking the private economy, including private enterprises and individual households, as the driving force for development. It is necessary to organize a number of medicinal production and processing centers in different regions for large-scale production.

The Prime Minister gave examples of policies such as if rice land has low productivity but medicinal plants have higher productivity, it is necessary to consider growing medicinal plants or there can be separate policies for medicinal plants if ministries, branches, and localities make recommendations such as how to tax, export, market, etc.

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Processing Golden Flower Tea in Que Phong District (Nghe An). Photo by Nga Nguyen

Emphasizing the need to ensure the quality of Vietnamese medicinal herbs, the Prime Minister stated that it is necessary to effectively prevent the smuggling of counterfeit and fake goods into Vietnam because smuggled and fake goods destroy the domestic market.

Agreeing on the measure to develop medicinal herbs linked to the value chain, the Prime Minister said that this is a very new and very big issue for Vietnam, only the value chain can conveniently solve the development problem for any product; linking medicinal herbs with traditional medicine as well as linking modern medicine with traditional medicine. The combination must come from schools (on health), from sectors, levels, especially in the health sector. There are measures to improve the quality of medicinal herbs such as building a set of medicinal herb standards, protecting gene sources.

Recalling the press reports that foreign countries sell a box of Sao Vang balm for up to 6 USD while domestically it is only sold for about 5,000 VND, the Prime Minister hopes that the upcoming conference will contribute to promoting our strengths in developing medicinal herbs.

According to Duc Tuan/chinhphu.vn