Vietnam’s aquatic exports will experience significant challenges in2015, although the sector’s export revenue has recorded an annualincrease of 18 percent, reaching 7.9 billion USD in 2014, said theMinistry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Nguyen HuuDung, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters andProducers (VASEP) said that last year’s significant increase in seafoodexport revenue stemmed from the acquisition of over 1 billion USD ofimported aquatic raw materials, noting that this led to the reliance onimported materials from foreign markets as well as expanded theimbalance of aquatic rearing and processing.

Vietnam’saquaculture sector has been warned of batches of products which did notmeet food safety standards in some key markets, including the US, Japanand the EU, due to the overuse of residues of antibiotics.

ViceChairman Dung also confirmed that Vietnamese exporters, especiallythose specialising in shrimp and tra fish, will be hampered by foodsecurity and anti-dumping tariffs imposed by the US.

He addedthat in a bid to prevent diseases which threaten aquatic productproductivity, it is necessary to control breeding animal quality andbuild a natural environment for aquaculture.

Aquatic exports in2015 will be hugely affected by current market factors generating anincrease in import prices, including the plunge in oil prices andcurrency depreciation. As such, the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment and VASEP recommend the affected enterprises preparemeasures to counteract these challenges to accessing import markets,especially Japan, the EU and the US.

Despite these challenges,aquatic export revenue is expected to reach 8 billion USD in 2015, a 1.5percent increase from 2014.-VNA