WTO accession brings golden opportunities to Vietnam in expanding the exporting markets for agricultural and forestry products. Yet, challenges hide behind these opportunities. The largest challenge is the weak competitiveness of Vietnamese agricultural and forestry products. Hence, enhancing competitiveness as well as market development ability in both domestic and foreign one is the core and urgent mission of the industry in the integration into international economy.
 

Seizing the exporting opportunities and ability to offer the right products at right place is considered the No. 1 secret which helps agricultural and forestry products of Vietnam fast tap into global market. According to economists, to take full advantage of opportunities to export agricultural and forestry products overseas, Vietnamese enterprises should build strategies to expand and maintain outstanding markets as well as ensure that the products can meet the requirement of the target market on quality, models, and price. Moreover, they should improve following weaknesses:

+ In comparison with competitors, most Vietnamese processors use obsolete processing technology which prevents products’ quality from gaining satisfaction of consumers in picky market such as Japan, EU, and North America.

+ Infrastructure serving transporting, storing, preserving, loading agricultural products, especially fresh ones, is so weak that the product prices and other indirect expenses increase.

+ The ability to manage the business and the production, to process, and to export has not met the requirement in the condition of free trade, especially in marketing, forecasting, and market estimating.

+ The strong economic connections between phases of producing, processing, and exporting, between input material supply and output consumption, between technical and economical phases have not been built yet to ensure the stability in quantity and quality, as well as productivity under market demand.

+ Although Vietnamese exporting categories are wider than they used to be, the product range is still monotonous. There is nothing new about types and quality. Exporting categories rely most on key and traditional articles such as rice, coffee, rubber, cashew, pepper, etc. which are to face implicit risks of slower and slower growth because of structural limitation in area, productivity, ability to exploit and competitiveness. Most of all, Vietnamese agricultural products are mainly exported raw instead of refined.