Improving overall produce quality is an urgent, long-term solution to help Vietnamese farm produce make inroads into global markets, says  Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong. He emphasized that quality improvement should be conducted in all industries, particularly in the context of arising technical barriers in many import countries and unexpected changes in world trade.

He added that the ministry is negotiating to open more export markets while maintaining traditional ones and limiting dependence on certain markets. The ministry is also optimising opportunities from free trade agreements and focusing on market development forecasts, especially in key markets such as Europe, Japan and China, he added.

According to director of the ministry’s Agro Processing and Market Development Authority (AgroTrade) Nguyen Quoc Toan, the export turnover of the main agricultural products including rice, coffee and cassava fell 5.6 percent year-on-year to 5.2 billion USD in the first four months of 2019.

However, the agricultural sector was able to maintain growth thanks to increases in the export of fruit and vegetable (up 7.03 percent year on year in January-April to more than 1.4 billion USD), aquatic products (up 2.4 percent to 2.48 billion USD), forestry products (up 17.8 percent to 3.2 billion USD).

Toan told exports of agro-forestry-fishery products in the next few months are forecast to see more positive changes, but difficulties and challenges lie ahead, such as stricter technical barriers from import markets and global trade volatility.