Vietnam should reduce its dependence on fish seed imports to increaseits seafood export profits in the future, said Deputy Minister ofAgricultural and Rural Development Vu Van Tam.

According to theDirectorate of Fisheries, nearly all fish seeds except tra and basa fishhave to be imported from other countries or exploited in their naturalenvironments.

The seeds come from tiger and white-leg shrimp, aswell as lobster, eel, tilapia and sturgeon. Of these, Vietnam hasimported 20 percent of demand for parents of tiger shrimp seeds and 100percent of demand for parents of white-leg shrimp seeds. Farmers havefound white-leg shrimp to be quite lucrative.

The domesticfisheries sector needs 180,000 white-leg shrimp parents to meet domesticdemand for 100 billion seeds. To meet such a demand, they need toimport all parents from the United States, Singapore, Indonesia andThailand.

Tam noted that import dependence had relegatedenterprises and farmers to a passive role in seed production and hadresulted in exports that were priced high to cover import costs.

Toaddress this concern, the ministry and aquaculture research instituteshad been implementing domestic shrimp seed production projects since2013 to develop domestic sources and reduce import dependence, Tam said.

Ifthe sector could produce seeds at home, the price of seeds could golower than that of imports, thereby increasing farmers' profits andplacing shrimp disease under control, said Pham Anh Tuan, DeputyDirector General of the Directorate of Fisheries.

The ministryexpects Vietnamese seafood export profits to reach 7.3 billion USD to7.5 billion USD for the entire year, or more than 6.7 billion USD in2013. Of this, shrimp export profits could make up 3.6 billion USD ormore than the 3.1 billion USD achieved in 2013.-VNA