Although seafood is one of Da Nang’s key export items, local seafood exporters are struggling with tight domestic supply and barriers from their foreign traditional  consumer markets.

Workers at a local seafood processing company

According to a spokesperson for the municipal Department of Industry and Trade, the city earned over 106 million USD from seafood exports in the first 7 months of this year, up around 5% compared with the same period last year.  Currently, local seafood exporters are facing the hike in raw material prices, and the increasing trade barriers applied by such international importers as the USA, South Korea, Japan and European countries.

The General Director of the Thuan Phuoc Seafood and Trading Corporation, Mr Tran Van Linh, said that his company has poured investment into building organic shrimp farms.  In addition, the company pledged to buy all shrimps not containing banned antibiotics from local raisers.  However, Chinese dealers have bought Vietnamese shrimps, regardless of quality, at between 10 and 15% higher price than domestic ones.  This resulted in a shortage of high-quality aquatic product on domestic market to satisfy the strict requirements of its foreign importers.

The Japanese-invested D and N Foods Processing Company has received many regular orders from such foreign markets as Japan, the USA and Hong Kong.  Over recent months, the company has had to refuse many orders from its traditional foreign importers due to a serve shortage of organic seafood and the 5-fold hike in their prices. 

In addition, dozens of local seafood exporters have been facing the same problem.

In attempting to deal with the problem, the municipal Department of Industry and Trade has recently facilitated local exporters to participate in international fairs in Thailand, Laos and China, as well as to promote their trade cooperation with partners in Belarus, the USA and Russia.  In addition, the focus will be on effectively implementing a project on encouraging Vietnamese businesses to expand their direct export activities to a foreign distribution network by 2020.