Viet Nam expects to promote prawn and shrimp exports to Australia if this export market abolishes quarantine barrier for those products. — Photo thoibaotaichinhvietnam.vn

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Australia is a potential market for Vietnamese seafood exports if the Australians remove their quarantine barrier for seafood products to the country.

Viet Nam's seafood exports, including shrimp, would increase strongly in the future if that is done, according to Consulate General of Viet Nam in Sydney, Australia.

Australia's total output of seafood products from catching and production is between 220,000 tonnes and 280,000 tonnes each year, and a half of that total has been exported. Meanwhile, the country's total demand for seafood products is one million per year.

However, the domestic supply of seafood products has reduced because Australia has had a policy on reducing exploitation of seafood on the seas to protect the environment.

Therefore, Australia's demand for imported seafood has increased sharply. The import value of seafood to Australia rose from US$868 million in 2011 to $1.9 billion in 2014.

In 2015, the value dropped sharply to $1.6 billion, mainly due to reduction of global prices and difficulties in business on the world market as against 2014.

Now, Viet Nam is ranked fourth among seafood exporting countries to Australia, after Thailand, China and New Zealand. In 2015, the export value of Vietnamese seafood products to Australia reached $117 million, accounting for 11.2 per cent of Australia's import value of seafood.

According to the Consulate General of Viet Nam in Sydney, export prices of Vietnamese seafood products are half that of Thai seafood products, so Viet Nam has the chance to promote its seafood exports to Australia, Nong nghiep Viet Nam newspaper reported.

Nguyen Thi Hoang Thuy, vice consul general, said that if seafood exports have to increase, Australia has to abolish inspection of white spot disease and yellow head virus for prawns and shrimps from Viet Nam.

Australian customers like back prawn which is a key product of Viet Nam's shrimp industry. But Vietnamese prawn exported to Australia face stricter quarantine barriers than seafood exported to other strict markets such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU), because they have white spot disease and yellow head virus. Due to the fact that its shrimp and prawn exports had white spot disease and yellow head virus, Viet Nam was not on the list of countries cleared by Australia.

So, Vietnamese seafood exporters send processed prawn and shrimp to Australia but are not permitted to ship fresh products to the market, and are, therefore, unable to expand their market share in Australia.

To overcome the quarantine barrier, local seafood enterprises should ensure quality of exported prawn and shrimp, Thuy said. Viet Nam should hold negotiations with Australia to abolish inspection of white spot disease and yellow head virus.

Meanwhile, the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) said Australia has small scale production in shrimp so those diseases would not have much effect on the domestic seafood production. Thus, Viet Nam could propose to Australia to abolish inspection of the two diseases or have a bilateral agreement on the methods of inspection for products with the two diseases.

The association reported in the first half of this year, Viet Nam's seafood export value gained a year-on-year increase of 2.4 per cent to $80.9 million to Australia. Australia was the seventh largest market for Vietnamese export seafood products, after the US, the EU, Japan, and China, in addition to South Korea and ASEAN. Shrimp accounts for 31 per cent of Viet Nam's seafood export value to Australia. — VNS