Ha Long city to host 10th international cashew nut conference

Nearly 500 businesses from 50 countries and territories are expected to participate.

Vinacas will hold bilateral exchanges and dialogues among domestic and foreign cashew nut enterprises along with a workshop on the sector’s development vision and strategies, a seminar on cleaner production of cashew nuts for the public health and a forum on the quality of imported raw cashew nuts.

The conference aims to support trade exchanges and promotion for businesses and help them expand markets as well as increase incomes for farmers.

In 2018, the cashew nut sector aims to cut volume while increasing quality to reach the export target of more than US$3.7 billion, about 65% of global export value.

Vinacas forecast the sector will enter a new period of development in 2019 with the building of a production value chain and deployment of measures to increase quality, trace of origin of products, and deep processing, and develop the domestic market to raise the trade value of the sector to US$4 billion.

The first Vinacas Golden Cashew Rendezvous was held in the southeastern province of Binh Phuoc in 2008. Two years later, Vietnam became the world’s leading exporter of cashew nuts.

Vietnam exported 141,000 tonnes of cashew in the first five months of 2018, raking in more than US$1.39 billion, according to the Foreign Trade Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The figures showed a rise of 21.4% in volume and 25.3% in value year-on-year.

In May alone, 35,000 tonnes of cashew were exported with revenue of US$330 million, up 8.8% in volume and 6.4% in value compared to the previous month. 

Export cashew price hit an average of US$9,867 per tonne in January-May, up 3.2% year-on-year.

Vietnamese cashew is sold in more than 90 countries and territories. The country achieved its highest-ever cashew exports in a year in 2017 with 353,000 tonnes of cashew kernels exported for US$3.52 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1.9% in volume and 23.8% in value.