Spending billions USD for importing agricultural products

The import turnover of 5 key agricultural groups (as of 15/7) of 2018 and 2017, the unit of calculation is "million USD ". Sketched by: T.Bình

Specifically, with only 5 key commodity groups (vegetables, wheat, cashew nuts, maize and soybean), the import turnover reached nearly $US 4.3 billion (updated to 15/7 according to the statistic of General Department of Vietnam Customs).

In that, there are two commodity groups which have reached an import turnover of $US 1 billion or more, and they are cashew nuts ($US 1.297 billion) and maize ($US 1.02 billion).

The remaining groups of products include: Vegetables and fruits reached $US 813 million; wheat reached $US 696 million; Soybean reached $US 435 million.

Among the above five groups, only cashew nuts decreased in turnover compared to the same period last year (reduced by $US 223 million).

Furthermore, cashew nuts have been mainly imported as raw materials for export processing (cashew kernel).

Besides that, large quantities of fruit are imported from Thailand and then exported to China.

The market for maize and soybean for Vietnam is mainly in the Americas such as Argentina, Brazil, USA.

The raw cashew nuts item is imported mainly form the Africa region; while wheat is imported from Canada or some European countries...

Therefore, although Vietnam is an agricultural country, the fact is that domestic enterprises are still heavily dependent on imported raw materials for production, especially maize, soybean and cashew.