Fruit, vegetable exports to China rise

Compared to the year-earlier period, Vietnam’s April shipments of fruit and vegetables to China also skyrocketed by 39.2%, the newspaper reported, citing statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

As such, in the first four months of 2019, Vietnam shipped a total of US$1 billion worth of fruit and vegetables to the northern neighboring market, up 4.3% year-on-year.

Latest data on sales of fruit and vegetables to China in May is not available, but the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said in a report that the country’s outbound sales to China continued its upward trend. In the first five months Vietnam’s earned US$1.8 billion from fruit and vegetable exports in total, up 10.3% year-on-year.

Even though the farm produce shipments to the United States, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands have performed well, China remains Vietnam’s largest fruit and vegetable buyer, accounting for 75%-80% of the latter’s total fruit and vegetable export revenue over the past few years.

Due to strong reliance on the market, Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exports are affected easily and heavily by changes and uncertainties in China.

China has tightened control over informal imports and switched to formal imports of farm produce, imposing various requirements on origin traceability, import licensing and product quality, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The new regulation heavily affected Vietnam’s outbound sales of fruit and vegetables in the first three months.