Agro-forestry and fishery exports hit US$32.6 billion over 10 month span

A closer look at the figure shows that exports of main agricultural products increased slightly by 2.3% to US$16.4 billion, seafood products went up 6.2% to US$7.24 billion, livestock products up 9.5% to US$0.46 billion and forestry products rose by 16.3% to US$7.6 billion.

Vietnam shipped a total of 264,000 tons of rice abroad in October, bringing the rice export volume in 10 months to 5.2 million tons worth US$2.6 billion (up 1.7% in volume and 14.1% in value). Many export markets saw high growth such as Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines and Malaysia.

It is forecast that the price of rice in the domestic market will continue to rise as businesses continue to purchase rice for export orders signed in October.

Despite cassava exports dropping by 9.78% in volume to 1.92 million tons, its value surged by 16.1% to US$739.6 million.

Meanwhile coffee exports resumed its slight growth after suffering a long period of decline. Overall, Vietnam exported 1.57 million tons of coffee in 10 months of 2018 to earn US$2.98 billion. The coffee market, however, is not predicted to rebound over the short term as Vietnam is about to enter the harvest season of Robusta coffee and global output may be abundant.

However, other products such as pepper, rubber and tea have not made any breakthrough in exports. For example, pepper exports fell 33.4% to US$676 million, rubber exports went down by 7.3% to US$1.66 billion and tea dropped by 7.7% to US$171 million.

Fruit and vegetable exports grew 15.5% to US$3.3 billion in the first 10 months of 2018 and are likely to fulfil the target of US$4 billion set for this year.

Agrotrade reported that agri-forestry and fishery imports are estimated to be at US$2.4 billion in October and US$25.72 billion 10 months, up 11.1%.