Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - The agriculture sector has promoted trade successfullydespite difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to expandingexport markets and helping the country gain an impressive trade surplus of 3.9billion USD in the first seven months.

Amongtrade deals made by the agriculture industry in the period, the mostnotable was Vietnam’s lychee exports to Japan. With efforts in negotiationand commitments to comply with Japan’s regulations, Japan authorised Vietnamto supervise and approve Vietnamese quarantine treatment establishments.

Accordingto Hoang Trung, director of the ministry’s Plant Protection Department, thedepartment had to continuously work online with Japanese authorities, evenimplementing online inspection, which created favourable conditions forenterprises to successfully export lychees in 2021.

NgoThi Thu Hong, Director of Ameii Vietnam Joint Stock Company, said when Vietnamwas allowed to monitor quarantine treatment establishments, the department’squarantine staff came to work with the establishments, which helped the lycheeexports to be much more favourable than last year.

Thedepartment also negotiated with Malaysia on pesticide residues to restore chiliexports. The department also broadly solved problems related tothe export of fresh fruits and promoted the opening of Vietnam's agriculturalproducts market to China, especially for lychees and sweet potatoes.

Theministry’s Department of Animal Health (DAH) also supported more factoriesto export milk and dairy products, feathers, fishmeal and fish oil to China. Ithas also completed procedures on exporting processed chicken products to Russiaand has so far gained approval from the country.

Inaddition, the DAH has also exchanged and negotiated with countries such as the US,China and Russia to open the market for animal products.

Accordingto Nguyen Quoc Toan, director of the Department of Agricultural ProductProcessing and Market Development, relevant agencies have negotiated to openmore export markets and remove technical barriers to promote the export ofagricultural, forestry and seafood produce.

Theagencies have also coordinated and exchanged with Vietnamese embassies andtrade offices in other countries to have timely analysts and forecasts onagricultural product consumption in key export markets such as Japan, theRepublic of Korea, the US, the EU and China during and after the pandemic.

Agencieshave focused on solving problems on food safety barriers to ease agriculturalexports. In the first half, they successfully organised onlineinspections, which helped 13 enterprises export catfish to the US besidesadding 18 and 13 seafood processing establishments for export to Russia and theRepublic of Korea respectively.

Accordingto Toan, the industry will continue to negotiate to remove importing countries’trade and technical barriers imposed on Vietnamese agricultural produce.

Itwill also expand the agricultural product market to economies withcomplementary product structures with Vietnam, such as Japan, the Republic ofKorea, India, the European Union or the Middle East, as wellas introducing suitable products in potential markets such as Russia,the Middle East, Africa and ASEAN./.