Tra fish export revenue forecast to fall 3.5% this year

Vo Hung Dung, vice chairman and general secretary of VN Pangasius, said the projected fall in tra fish exports is attributable to the volatile exchange rate between the US dollar and the Vietnam dong instead of a decline in foreign orders.

“The exchange rate volatility led to a sharp drop in tra fish exports in the first months of this year, so more shipments in the final months of this year could not prevent tra fish export turnover from sliding in all of this year,” Dung said   

By August, Vietnam had earned more than US$1.2 billion from exporting tra fish products to 113 markets, decreasing 9.1% year-on-year.

According to VN Pangasius, Vietnamese firms had signed contracts to export 721,200 tons of tra fish as of end-September. Fish fillets made up a majority of the volume but export orders for these products and the proportion of value-added products had declined in the period.

Particularly, the volume of tra fillets ordered by importers in the third quarter accounted for 76.65% of total export volume compared to 77.25% in the second quarter and 83.6% in the first quarter.

The percentage of value-added tra fish products also dropped in export proportion as they made up 1.78% of total tra fish exports in the first quarter but went down to 0.55% in the second quarter and 0.53% in the third quarter.

However, the export proportions of whole tra fish and tra fish cuts had stayed stable in the year to September, accounting for 7.02% of total tra fish exports in the first quarter, 8.71% in the second quarter and 8.63% in the third quarter.

The proportion of fish powder increased sharply to 3.88% in the second quarter and 7.35% in the third quarter.

In terms of markets, the United States, the European Union (EU), ASEAN, China and Hong Kong were major importers of Vietnamese tra fish in the first three quarters of this year, according to VN Pangasius.

Of the total export orders, 18% were from China and Hong Kong, 11.1% from the ASEAN countries, 14.1% from the EU and 10.6% from the US in the third quarter.

VN Pangasius expected Vietnam to harvest one million tons of tra fish this year from a total area of 3,500 hectares, falling 5% in volume and 8% in farming area against last year.

To prop up tra fish exports, VN Pangasius is making necessary procedures to set up an e-commerce trading floor at mekongfishmarket.com, Le Ngoc Anh, a member of the association, told a news briefing on tra fish production and trading in the first nine months of this year in Can Tho City last week.

The ultimate goal of the website is to boost tra fish sales, instead of displaying products of this fish only, Dung told the Daily on the sidelines of the event.

Currently, tra fish enterprises mostly sell their products to those buyers they have met at trade fairs and in promotion trips.

Anh said e-commerce is growing fast in the world and online transactions in developed countries have made up 90% of the world’s total.

It is forecast that in the next five years, revenue from online transactions in Asia will account for 25% of total online trade value in the world.

However, Dung said it will require a lot of effort to form an online trading floor for tra fish because it needs members and regulations on product quality and payment methods. Therefore, the website will focus on introducing tra fish products in the first stage before it can help promote sales and build a strong brand for Vietnamese tra fish.

VN Pangasius expects that the website will come online between April and September next year.