It is clearly seen that commitments on opening market after joining the WTO and especially the FTA ASEAN – China have severe impacts on Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable industry in integration process and these impacts focus on temperate fruits and fruits with segments.
 
In general, fruit and vegetable products receive a huge tariff reduction in Vietnam’s commitments on lowering tariffs as a full member of the WTO. Tariff on apples, pears, and grapes will be immediately reduced from 40% to 20% and to 10% after 5 years. The MFN (most-favored nation) tariff rate on raisin at that time is 40% and will be decreased to 25% and to 13% after 5 years.

Although many conditions, such as land, climate, soil, environment, and so on, are very favorable for Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable industry for development, this industry still has many significantly fundamental weaknesses. First of all, it is the issue about quality. The quality of Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable products is not high enough. Many current seeds are only suitable for domestic market and have not fit for exporting yet. Vietnam has not established a plentiful set of fruit and vegetable seeds satisfying various tastes of domestic and oversea markets, fresh consumption and processing industry. In addition, the issues about preserving, packaging, and processing after harvesting are incident limits to this industry, which make quality and price of Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable products uncompetitive.

It is clearly seen that commitments on opening market after joining the WTO and especially the FTA ASEAN – China have severe impacts on Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable industry in integration process and these impacts focus on temperate fruits and fruits with segments. In addition, the most noticeable of these impacts is their significantly wide sphere of influence on farmers and rural areas. Thus, in order to develop this industry, Vietnam has to quickly reorganize domestic production to improve the product quality and competitiveness and to guarantee production and farmers’ life.