Exporting agriculture products: “benefits and stagger”

The chart of average export prices in 2016 and 2017 of key agricultural commodities. Sketched by T.Bình

According to the latest statistics from the General Department of Vietnam Customs, showed that cashew nuts are the most valuable agricultural item with potential prices. Although export volume has not increased sharply over the same period of 2016, the value of turnover increased significantly.

Accordingly, as of 15/12, exports of cashew nuts reached 338,397 tons, total turnover reached over $US 3.363 billion. Comparison with the same period of 2016, the output was increased only by 5,200 tons, but the value of turnover was increased nearly $US 650 million. As a result, the average export price increased from $US 8,554/ton last year to nearly $US 10,000/ton this year.

Thanks to the good export price, for the first time in history, the cashew sector has reached the milestone of $US 3 billion in export turnover and even though the year isn’t over, the turnover level has surpassed the experts’ forecast of ($US 3.3 billion in 2017).

Along with cashew nuts, vegetables are also the first sector to reach $US 3 billion of turnover (as of 15/12 it reached $US 3.346 billion) and is considered as the "billion USD" industry that has the fastest growth with the figure reaching nearly 42.3% over the same period last year.

Another agricultural product is coffee. This traditional farm product reached an average price of $US 2,268/ton, an increase of $US 411/ton over the same period in 2016. This is a positive sign in the context of total output and value of turnover of this item, although it decreased compared to the same period last year (output decreased by more than 360,000 tons, the turnover decreased more than $US 115 million).

However, rice only increased the average price by $US 2/ton to $US 451/ton (compared to $US 449/ton in the same period), it could be considered as a positive sign for both output and value of turnover compared with 2015, in that output decreased by 26.9%, the turnover decreased by 22.9%. By the end of 15/12, the total output of exported rice reached nearly 3.73 million tons, the total value of turnover reached $US 2.558 billion.

In contrast to the improvement of the above categories, tea, pepper and cassava are declining on the rate of export price. The most serious fall is pepper. Compared to the same period last year, a ton of exported pepper decreased from $US 8,046 in 2016 to $US 5,232 this year. This result led to a volume of export increase of over 30,000 tons, but the total export turnover decreased by nearly $US 340 million.

In addition, the average export price of tea also decreased by $US 18/ton and cassava dropped by $US 9/ton. With the export output of hundreds of thousands of tons (tea) or millions of tons (cassava), the amount of turnover that these two industries lost is significant.