As a full member of the World Trade Organization, Vietnam has been relaxed itself with many tariff barriers and enjoyed enormous opportunities to export “Made in Vietnam” products to international market. However, in order to grasp such golden opportunity, first and foremost, Vietnam has to strengthen its national competitiveness.

How can Vietnam seafood cope with exports challenges?

Recently, seafood exports has joined the 1 billion US club, a club of export products gaining annual turnover of more than $1 billion. In the first six months of 2007, seafood exports has brought about an earnings of over $1.6 billion, in which Japan market consumed more than $1 billion –worth Vietnamese seafood, followed by US and EU.

However, despite significant increase in terms of turnover, there emerged numerous claims and warnings over violation of hygiene and safety regulations on Vietnam seafood exports. Recently, Japan decided to control 100% export consignments from Vietnam, similar actions also have been taken by other trading partner on Vietnam agricultural products.  The Food and Drug Administration of America also published list of rejected consignments in their websites. If logging in http://www.fd?gov/ora/oasis/6/ora_oasis_c_vn.html, list of Vietnamese firms whose exports consignment were rejected to enter this market will be displayed, including seafood consignments.

Violation in the past few years:

Actually, Vietnamese enterprises has violated regulation since the past few years, however the level of violation was still within acceptance range.   However, in response to alarming violation of Vietnamese exporters in recent years, many countries have established non tariff barriers, particularly safety and hygiene regulations to prevent Vietnamese goods from entering their markets. This posed serious threat over “Made in Vietnam” exports.

Reports of US Food and Drugs Administration showed that most of defect of Vietnamese export were related to packaging, labeling, over antibiotic residues (Chloraphenico) and chemical-infected (Salmonella ....).

How to improve exports quality?

In order to improve the quality of exports (or even for consumption in domestic market), the priority is to restructure production and management.   Firstly, processing enterprises and seafood producers should cooperate to establish modern, large scale farming areas in order to ensure sufficient output with international standard quality.

Secondly, there should be strict control over raising of breeding fish to ensure the right procedure and safety.

Thirdly, other procedures such as processing, packaging and preservation should follow international standards.

With regards to management, there should be a comprehensive national standard system in terms of medicine, forestry, agriculture, foreign trade in line with international standards in order to ensure the quality of Vietnam  exports and enhance our trademark in the world market.

To this end, we need supports from both in-country and overseas based scientists, who can transfer latest technology and information for management agencies. In order to strengthen our national competitiveness, quality management is a crucial factor and key for “ Made in Vietnam” products to penetrate into potential global market.