Vietnamese agricultural products with opportunities to access large export markets

On 11/10, Central Vietnam Farmers Association, Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development jointly organized the Fourth National Farmers Forum with the theme "From CPTPP to EVFTA: Together with farmers to the global market. ”

The conference aimed to understand Vietnam's opportunities and challenges when exporting agricultural products, especially the positive and negative impacts on agricultural production, processing and trading activities of 11 million Vietnamese farmer households.

In 2018 and 2019, Vietnam joined two new generation free trade agreements (FTA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Vietnam -European Union Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).

The signing of these agreements is expected to open up great opportunities for Vietnam's $43 billion export market for agriculture, forestry and fishery products. Through these two agreements, Vietnam's agricultural products will have the opportunity to reach 37 major markets with a population of over 1 billion people.

Speaking at the forum, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Dinh, Vice Chairman of the Central Vietnam Farmers Association, said that Vietnam has many policies to support farmers in production, as well as consumption of agricultural products. However, the added value in Vietnam's exports of agricultural products is still low due to many barriers, especially on food hygiene and safety. This forum will be an opportunity for leaders of ministries, branches, farmer associations, businesses and farmers to find outstanding solutions to make policy recommendations to support farmers.

According to Mr. Dinh, CPTPP and EVFTA have been opening up great opportunities for Vietnam's economy; including agricultural production and agricultural trade, especially in the context of emerging trade protectionism and uncertain US-China trade war.

Besides great opportunities, free trade agreements also bring significant challenges to Vietnam's agricultural sector. Under the new context, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Dinh is concerned about the issue of maintaining the output and quality of agricultural products to serve export markets, while expanding the domestic market.

At the forum, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai said that the CPTPP and EVFTA Agreement certainly opens a new stage of promising cooperation, expected to bring practical benefits to people, businesses and create great resilience for the agricultural sector of both Vietnam and its partners.

The CPTPP with 10 partners, including those through which Vietnam is the first to establish bilateral free trade relations such as Canada, Chile, Mexico and Peru, will open up opportunities Agricultural cooperation association between Vietnam and CPTPP partners.

With CPTPP, most of Vietnam's major export agricultural products are entitled to 0% tax rate right after the Agreement comes into effect or after 3-5 years. For example, those prpducts include some types of seafood (fish, shrimp), fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, rice, dried nuts ... This is a potential opportunity for Vietnamese businesses to grow exports as well as contributing to diversifying export markets for Vietnam's strong agricultural, forestry and fishery products.

With EVFTA, this is a comprehensive, high quality, balanced agreement of interests for both Vietnam and the EU. This agreement will bring great opportunities for the agricultural sector as a series of taxes on agricultural products exported to the EU will gradually decrease to 0% after a short period.

Specifically, once the EVFTA Agreement comes into effect, over 70% of Vietnam's exports to the EU will enjoy 0% tax. After seven years, 99.7% of Vietnam's exports will be entitled to 0% tax, a small number of remaining items will be imported into the EU according to the tariff quota with the quota import tax of 0 %.

"This is the highest level of commitment that a partner for Vietnam in the FTA has signed. This benefit is especially meaningful when the EU is continuously one of our two largest export markets. Currently with export turnover of US $ 42 billion, total bilateral trade is nearly US $ 56 in 2018, " Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai said.

Despite great opportunities for Vietnamese agricultural products, the participants of the forum said that the challenge to conquer markets in the world was not small. Specifically, the challenges for agricultural products when exporting to markets from members of CPTPP and EVFTA are technical barriers on food safety and animal and plant quarantine; barriers on governance, technology level in agricultural products - which are currently the bottlenecks that Vietnamese agricultural products have not been able to penetrate into fastidious markets such as the EU and Japan.