Agricultural exports up 9.5%
Agricultural exports up 9.5%
The export value of agricultural products and seafood has increased 9.5 per cent year-on-year to US$22.5 billion, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced.
Nguyen Viet Chien, director of the ministry's Information and Statistics Centre, said the export value of forestry products had the biggest year-on-year surge, growing 18.3 per cent to $4 billion. Major agricultural products followed with a year-on-year increase of 7.7 per cent to $12.2 billion, as did seafood, which floated up 1.7 per cent in export value to $5 billion.
Chien said the increases were due to a surge in export volume but not value, although most of the products' export prices on the world market went up.
Seven products gained billions of US dollars, including seafood, rice, coffee, rubber, wooden products, cassava and cashews, Chien said.
Of the above, coffee saw record growth in both export volume and value, he said. The volume of exports saw a year-on-year increase of 37.7 per cent, swelling to 1.41 million tonnes, while the value increased by 32.7 per cent to $3 billion.
However, the export price decreased by 3.8 per cent to $2,126 per tonne compared with the same period last year.
The two largest export markets for Vietnamese coffee products were the US, accounting for 12.11 per cent of the export value, and Germany, which represented 12 per cent.
The ministry expected that national coffee exports might go down due to lack of supply but spike again in December because the growers would begin to harvest the 2012-13 crop.
Wood and wooden products also saw a large increase in exports for the first 10 months of this year.
These items surged in value to $3.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 19.3 per cent. Most major export markets for Vietnamese wood and wooden products had strong growth, including the US with a growth rate of 28.76 per cent, Japan with a rate of 19.73 per cent and China with a rate of 7.2 per cent.
By the end of this year, exports of those products could increase given high demand in the world market, Chien said.
In the first 10 months of this year, seafood increased slightly in export value, going up 1.7 per cent to $5 billion. This was mainly due to higher export prices in the world market, according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, local seafood exporters faced tough competition from both domestic and world markets during the period, particularly given mounting fees and technical barriers, Chien said.
Rice and rubber were the only key export products to see an increase in export volume but a reduction in export value during the first 10 months.
Rice had a year-on-year surge of 8.3 per cent in volume to 6.9 million tonnes but a year-on-year decrease of 8.7 per cent in value to $3.14 billion. The average export price fell 9 per cent to $452 per tonne compared with the same period last year
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