Luang Namtha eyes doubling crop exports
Luang Namtha eyes doubling crop exports
Luang Namtha province looks set to reach 90 percent of all crop production being exported to the Chinese market by the end of this year, paving a positive way for the province to earn more income, a senior agriculture official said.
The department's Director General Mr Khammuan Lokamcheua told Vientiane Times yesterday that the rubber harvest will begin this month and mainly produced for export.
“Some 7,000 hectares of rubber plantation are set to be tapped later this month,” he said, adding that its value and that of other agricultural produce will be double compared to last year.
According to the report, more than 131,000 tonnes of crops were exported to China, mainly to the nearest markets in neighbouring Chinese provinces.
The figure includes more than 24,000 tonnes of sweet corn, some 16,000 tonnes of pumpkins, more than 57,000 tonnes of cassava and over 16,000 tonnes of other crops.
Beside these crops and the rubber production, other main items exported to China are watermelon, bananas, maize and sugarcane amongst others.
Luang Namtha province is now being encouraged by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to focus on the standardisation of agricultural produce to meet the demands of international markets.
Business sectors, farmers and company representatives were recently invited to hear about various regulations related to the sanitary and phytosanitary or SPS measures and other standards of food safety.
“We hope the value and quantity of exports to the Chinese market will continue to be on the rise in the years to come. At the same time we also look at the quality of products in order to meet the requirements of international standards,” Mr Khammuan said.
A new Chinese company has recently agreed to invest more than 25.6 billion kip (US$3.2 million) in building a rubber processing factory in Long district of Luang Namtha province in order to semi-process the raw rubber before exporting it to China.
Work on the construction of the processing factory is set to commence this year and is expected to finish within two years.
When construction is complete it will be able to process 5,000 tonnes of rubber per year.
The factory will go into production using raw materials from the company's own rubber plantation and other local growers in the district.
Authorities plan to have six rubber processing factories across the province. So far four factories have already been built in Namtha, Viengphoukha and Sing districts.
Luang Namtha earned over 104 billion kip (US$13 million) from the export of more than 14,000 tonnes of rubber last year.
The province has about 33,640 hectares of rubber trees which require more than 6,000 labourers to work in the plantations.
