The export of cassava can earn the country up to US$2 billion if local exporters can penetrate the European and US markets, according to Nguyen Van Lang, President of the Viet Nam Cassava Association.—File Photo

HCM CITY (Biz Hub)— The export of cassava can earn the country up to US$2 billion if local exporters can penetrate the European and US markets, according to Nguyen Van Lang, President of the Viet Nam Cassava Association.

He noted that while Viet Nam has more than 100 processing factories meeting the high standards of selective markets, major markets for Vietnamese cassava are currently limited to Asia, such as mainland China, South Korea and Taiwan.

According to the association's statistics, the country now has 560,000ha of cassava, with an annual output of 9.4 million tonnes.

Viet Nam had planned to use all of its cassava output for the production of bio-ethanol. However, the economic downturn has delayed the operation of ethanol factories, forcing cassava producers to turn to exporting their products.

Last year, the country shipped abroad over 4.2 million tonnes of cassava, bringing home $1.35 billion, a year-on-year rise of over 57 per cent in volume and 41 per cent in value, making it the second largest cassava exporter in the world after Thailand.—VNS