Can Tho (VNA) - Vietnam needs to developan equitable and sustainable shrimp production chain, Dinh Xuan Lap, DeputyDirector of the International Collaborating Centre for Aquaculture andFisheries Sustainability (ICAFIS),  has said.

He was speaking at a conference, entitled"Consumer Dialogue on Vietnamese Shrimp Value Chain," organised byICAFIS in partnership with WWF Vietnam and Oxfam Vietnam in Can Tho on May 19.

"Developing an equitable and sustainableshrimp production chain will help the domestic shrimp industry achieve internationalstandards," Lap said.

According to ICAFIS, the fisheries sectorcontributes to more than 3 percent of the country’s GDP annually, and itsproducts are exported to 164 countries, of which shrimp is one of the four mainexport products. The Vietnamese seafood creates jobs for about 700,000households and has an average growth rate of 6.82 percent per year.

However, in the recent years, there has been astrong fluctuation in shrimp exports. Particularly, requirements fortraceability, production chain management, and the application of chaincertification systems are increasing.

Statistics of the Vietnam Association of SeafoodExporters and Producers (VASEP) revealed that shrimp export market has changeddramatically in recent years. The export value of the shrimp industry increasedsharply from 2.1 billion USD in 2010 to 3.95 billion USD in 2014.

However, in 2015, shrimp export revenue not onlydecreased to 1.02 billion USD, but the market shrank by more than a third from150 markets in 2014 to 92 in 2015. The shrimp export market saw the strongestdecrease, with the US decreasing its imports by 35.4 percent, Japan by 22.8percent, and the European Union by 18 percent.

ICAFIS experts said that most of the researcheson shrimp value chains over the past 10 years pointed towards the shortage andinefficiencies in links between enterprises and shrimp farmers, and the lack ofinformation transparency, which negatively affected the quality, traceabilityof products and competitiveness of Vietnamese shrimp in the world market.

According to ICAFIS’ latest research findings in2015 on value chains in Soc Trang and Ca Mau, 72 percent of enterprises’capital is spent on raw shrimp, but 79.8 percent of the company’s raw materialsare purchased from small farmers and local traders.

Besides these, they said that shrimp farming in Vietnamwas facing many risks such as decreasing selling price but increasing prices ofmaterials, climate change, as well as restrictions on access to credits, whichare barriers for small-scale producers and processors to expand production andcomply with regulatory standards, Lap said.

Funded by the European Union, Oxfam Vietnam iscooperating with ICAFIS to implement the project "Sustainable developmentof shrimp production value chain in Vietnam" for four years from 2016 to2020.

According to ICAFIS, after more than a year ofproject implementation in Soc Trang, Bac Lieu and Ca Mau, 54 contracts weresigned to link chains from input phase to output phase to ensure qualitycontrol in the chain, adoption of sustainable certification practices, andorigin traceability application. This helps reduce the input cost by 15 percentto 20 percent and increase the selling price by 3 percent to 5 percent.

The project also promotes the participation andcooperation of domestic and international seafood enterprises in thesustainable shrimp value chain in Vietnam under the public-private partnership(PPP) model.

To promote the sustainable shrimp productionchains, Huynh Quoc Tinh, program coordinator of WWF Vietnam, said that the PPPmodel in fisheries should be encouraged and production plans on regional scalemust be built with the involvement of factories and importers.

In addition to these, experts at the conferencesuggested that the Government must participate in and support the process ofchain management to avoid link breaks as before, and create a mechanism foraccess to credits, so that farmers and new businesses are financially able toinvest in the industry. - VNA