Processing industry development: Improving the competitiveness of agricultural exports

(11/09/2019) The development of processing industry: Improving the competitiveness of agricultural exports

Development investment processing industry is an important solution to improve competitiveness, the export value of agricultural products. This problem becomes more urgent when Vietnam was always in the top group of leading nations on agricultural exports but not yet earned value commensurate with the potential.

Pineapple export processing at JSC Dong Giao Export Food (Ninh Binh province).

High output, low value

According to statistics of the Department for Processing and Developing agricultural markets (MARD), 10 years ago, the industrial processing of agricultural - forestry - fishery maintain growth 5-7% / year. Thus was formed and developed industrial system has a capacity of processing about 120 million tons of the design of agricultural raw material / year. Currently the proportion of raw commodities, preliminary processing account for over 90% of total exports, but the economic value of the relatively low revenues. Some agricultural products of our country's strengths, such as rice, tea, rubber, pepper, cashew nuts ... always stood top 10 world but only raw, unprocessed deep.
 

In addition to investment in research and application of post-harvest technology in primary processing and storage of vegetables, need to focus research on the varieties to create products fresh vegetables with high quality and duration of long-term preservation while construction investment in the factory packaging materials. Department of processing and agricultural markets Development (MARD) Nguyen Quoc Toan

Deputy Director of the European market, the Americas (MOIT) Tran Ngoc Quan said, the value of vegetable exports in 2018 reached $ 3.8 billion and the forecast export value will increase by vegetables Vietnam is moving toward the high-end markets such as the EU, USA, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand ... However, compared with advanced countries in the region and the world, Vietnam's agricultural products competitive low mainly exported as raw products under quota, yet attractive design, high cost, potential food safety risks. "The main reason comes from the limitations of preservation technology, agro-processing after harvest. Specifically, the rate of post-harvest losses to 25% for fruits; more than 30% with the vegetables; 20% with the tubers "- Quan emphasized.

Currently, there are over 7,500 companies processing industrial scale tied to exports, and more than 2,600 agricultural processing facilities. However, the level of processing of agricultural products of Vietnam is still low compared to the world. The majority of processing enterprises with small scale, nearly 80% is crude processing capacity of only 5-10% of agricultural output.

Removed bottlenecks

In fact, the majority of enterprises in the field of agriculture lack of capital for investment in technological innovation, production lines. Besides, enterprises still face many difficulties in access to land, capital, policy support ... The last time, although the policy of the Government is the application of technology priorities in the agricultural sector , priority industrial promotion, including the processing industry, but not much policy support and less effective in practice.

To improve processing for businesses, many economic experts believe that the most important is that enterprises must change thinking, priorities from quantity to quality. According to Deputy Director in charge of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for development of agriculture and rural development (MARD) Tran Cong Thang, companies must advance to agricultural products exported not only focus on quantity, but concern about the quality volume and value. Vietnam is gradually approaching the high-end market, aims to reduce dependence on China so it needs to invest technical science, technologies and modern equipment in order to find ways of preserving vegetables entry and most relevant results.
Towards businesses, Director JSC Smart Vietnam Luu Thi Thao Agri recommendations, the Government should create favorable conditions for businesses to access land to build factories, processing facilities, the raw material; loan policies, tax breaks for companies in the early stages when he started investment, especially in priority policy for high technology enterprise applications. Along with that, the ministries should support the development of enterprises in the processing of human resources in the long-term plan, basically; support enterprises to develop and operate the modern management systems.

Ngoc Anh
Source: Economic & Urban