Vietnam to promote fruit, vegetable exports to China

HANOI: Vietnam has more opportunities to boost fruit and vegetable exports to China this year due to signing more protocols to permit official exports of fruits and vegetables to this neighbouring market.

At the end of 2023, Vietnam and China signed a protocol on plant quarantine requirements for fresh watermelons exported from Vietnam to China.

Dang Phuc Nguyen, general secretary of the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association, said this protocol would be an important step to open up more opportunities for businesses and farmers growing watermelon in Vietnam.

This protocol is expected to help Vietnam’s watermelon exports double next year. Accordingly, inspection of this fruit at the border gates will be much faster.

China customs will reduce the frequency of inspection to only 2% to 3% of the export batches, so there will no longer be watermelon congestion during the peak season like during the Tet holiday. Besides that, the export price of this fruit will also be more stable.

In the first 10 months of 2023, Vietnam’s watermelon export turnover to China reached Us$44mil, an increase of 162% over the same period the previous year.

It is forecast that watermelon exports to this market could reach more than Us$50mil in 2024, said Nguyen.

One year ago, Vietnam and China also signed a protocol on the export of fresh bananas from Vietnam to China. According to the Import-export Department, that protocol has created a significant increase in Vietnamese bananas exported to China.

In the first 10 months of 2023, Vietnam was the second largest supplier of bananas to China. China Customs Authority’s statistics showed that during the first 10 months, Vietnamese bananas imported into China reached 412,000 tonnes, an increase of 2.3% over the same period in 2022.

Meanwhile, according to Vietnam’s General Department of Customs, in the first 11 months of 2023, Vietnam’s total fruit and vegetable exports reached Us$5.19bil, up 70.3% over the same period last year.

China was still the largest market for Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exports in the first 11 months of 2023 with a value of Us$3.4bil, an increase of 149% over the same period the previous year. In terms of products, in 2023, durian surpassed dragon fruit to become the product with the highest export value.