Time: 02/2023

 

By: the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

 

Technical regulations and standards are increasingly prevalent and continuously evolving in the international trade of food and nonfood (industrial) products. Moreover, there is evidence that many developing countries face challenges in complying with the safety and quality requirements that these regulations and standards lay down. Since 2008, UNIDO has regularly collected evidence about trade related challenges and their evolution over time, particularly in the area of compliance with (quality, certification, labeling, etc.) requirements set by international markets.

 

In their efforts to improve compliance, the challenge for national governments and donors is to allocate scarce financial and technical resources amongst a plethora of capacity building needs. There is, therefore, a need to identify where the most acute compliance challenges are faced—in a trade context this means identifying the products and markets with the highest rates of noncompliance—thus recording rejections. In this context, the Standards Compliance Analytics (SCA) tool can be used to facilitate the use of rejection data to identify the key compliance challenges faced by exporting countries and thereby enhance targeting of investments in building relevant compliance capacities (more details about the SCA tool can be found in the Annex). Using the SCA tool, this report focuses on analyzing the trends and patterns of Vietnamese agri-food import rejections in five major international markets, namely Australia, China, the European Union (EU), Japan and the United States (US). The objective of this report is to gain insights about the challenges faced by Vietnam in complying with product quality and safety standards and regulations in agri-food trade towards both regional and global markets.

 

The present report was prepared by UNIDO and was validated during a roundtable meeting. During the meeting, valuable feedback was provided by attendees from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Vietnam National University of Agriculture, the Swiss Import Promotion Programme (SIPPO), the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality of Vietnam (STAMEQ), Global Food Import & Export JSC, the Viet Phuc Cooperation, the Plant Protection Department, Vietnam Institute of Agriculture and Post-harvest Technology, TEFOOD company, the Asia Pacific Mango Network and the Australian embassy in Vietnam. Based on the analysis of the rejection data and consultation with various stakeholders, recommendations are provided and can be divided into three categories: strengthen the Quality Infrastructure System; enhance industry compliance, competitiveness and sustainability; and promote a conducive policy environment and culture for quality.

 

The publication is attached below:

 

Tải tài liệu
Standards Compliance Analytics Border Rejections In Major Global Markets Vietnam (English)
Standards Compliance Analytics Border Rejections In Major Global Markets Vietnam (Vietnamese)