Vietnam fears protectionism will affect farm produce exports

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at a recent press conference that protectionism has returned with countries especially trying to protect their farm produce. 

Fifty percent of farm produce earnings in Vietnam rely on exports. 

Analysts said that many countries have made heavy investments in agriculture as a measure to ensure food security and enhance competitiveness of their farm produce. 

China, for example, has decided to invest US$450 billion on agricultural restructuring. Thailand has invested US$1.5 billion to fix market problems while Myanmar has also accelerated agricultural production restructuring after renovation.

The Washington Post wrote that President-elect Donald Trump has decided to nominate Lighthizer to serve as the US trade representative, commenting that Trump is bringing in the big guns to roll back free trade, and that Lighthizer could help Trump implement his agenda of restricting global commerce. 

The year 2016, according to Cuong, was one of the most difficult for Vietnam’s agriculture with natural disasters occurring in many provinces which caused a loss of VND39 trillion, three times higher than the average damage in the last five years.

Meanwhile, the marine environment scandal in the four central provinces also dealt a strong blow to Vietnam’s agricultural production. 

Vietnam, for the first time in history, saw a minus 0.18% in agricultural growth rate in the first six months of 2016.

Vietnam’s agriculture could only regain the growth in the second half of the year after a lot of efforts. The GDP grew by 1.36%, the export reached the record high of US$32.1 billion, up by US$1.7 billion over 2015, while the farm produce trade surplus reached US$7.5 billion and 10 export items had the export turnover of US$1 billion and higher.

Brackish shrimp exports alone brought US$3.2 billion, while 200 animal feed companies churned out 25 million tons of products, which satisfied the demand of husbandry industry.  

MOIT said export turnover from vegetables and fruits may reach US$3 billion in the time to come.

A report released in mid-2016 on the 2013-2015 agriculture restructuring plan showed that only one percent of enterprises have invested in agriculture and 99% of are either small and or very small.