Le Van Thiet, deputy director of the Plant Protection Bureau of Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said sweet potatoes are the next agricultural product that the bureau has negotiated with Chinese customs to export to the market through normal trade channels.
According to the plan, within a week, China will conduct an online inspection and investigation of Vietnam's sweet potato growing areas and packaging facilities to consider the possibility of approving the normal export of Vietnamese sweet potatoes to China.
Le Van Thiet said that for the Chinese market, 11 kinds of Vietnamese fruits, including pitaya, longan, rambutan, mango, jackfruit, watermelon, banana, mangosteen, lychee, durian and passion fruit, have been exported to the Chinese market. Among them, only passion fruit has been approved by the Chinese side to be exported to the local market through the Guangxi port. After sweet potatoes, there are fruits such as pomelo and coconut.
Sweet potato is one of the important crops in Vietnam, mainly produced in Bình Tân of Vinh Long. Over the years, the planting area of Japanese purple sweet potatoes in this place has ranked first in the country, remaining at 13,000 hectares.
At present, the agricultural department of Vinh Long is actively guiding and assisting farmers to establish codes for planting areas to produce sweet potatoes according to the prescribed standards, so as to prepare for the export of sweet potatoes, especially Japanese purple sweet potatoes, to China.
Statistics from the General Administration of Customs show that in the first eight months of this year, Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exports reached nearly US$2.2 billion, down 12 percent year-on-year. Among them, exports to China amounted to 967 million US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 32.4%. In the first eight months of this year, sweet potato exports exceeded US$20.6 million, a year-on-year decrease of 21.8%.
In recent years, the main consumer market of Vietnamese sweet potatoes has always been China, but export activities are still through border trade channels, which poses many risks to farmers and enterprises, leading to the depreciation of harvests.
Source: zh.vietnamplus.vn
