The value of Vietnam’s seafood exports reached an all-time high in 2017 and the country is aiming to better this in 2018, reports Seafood Source. The latest data from Vietnam Customs show seafood exports were worth EUR6.8 billion (USD8.3 billion) in 2017, an increase of 18 percent compared with 2016. Vietnams’s vice minister for agriculture, Vu Van Tam said exports in 2018 aim at EUR 7.3 billion, up 8.2 percent from 2017. Shrimp and pangasius are Vietnam’s two major seafood export products. In 2017, the export value of shrimp rose 21 percent year-on-year to EUR3.11 billion, while that of pangasius increased nearly four percent to EUR1.47 billion. Despite the higher rate of inspections recently initiated in the US, imports of Vietnamese seafood were worth EUR1.2 billion. However, the E.U. was the top destination for seafood products from Vietnam in 2017 for the first time. A top priority for Vietnam’s agriculture and the country’s seafood industry will be to get the E.U. to withdraw the so-called “yellow card’, which was imposed by the European Commission in October 2017 in response to the country’s shortcomings in dealing with domestic IUU fishing problems. Since then, Vietnam has taken a series of legislative and administrative measures to counter the problem.
