HCM City (VNA) –China is current the biggest market for Vietnamese agricultural products, butits demand for fruits and vegetables is still growing, offering a chance forVietnamese firms to boost even stronger shipments to this country.

The information was revealed at a Vietnam-Chinaforum on fruit and vegetable exports held in Ho Chi Minh City on March 14.

Le Thanh Hoa, Deputy Director of the Department ofAgro Processing and Market Development under the Ministry of Agriculture andRural Development, said that fruit and vegetable exports to China reached 2.8billion USD in 2018, accounting for 70 percent of Vietnam’s total earnings fromthe market.

He said China is a giant market with apopulation of over 1.4 billion and an annual agro-forestry-fishery importturnover of 160 billion USD. Aside from rice, rubber, and cassava, its demandfor fruits and vegetables is also on the rise.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exportcapacity could reach up to 10 billion USD, but the current figure is just 4billion USD, Hoa noted.

Highlighting the export advantages, he saidVietnam is located next to China, which has cut down 95 percent of importtariffs on Vietnamese farm produce under the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement.China has also created green lanes at its border gates, allowing Vietnamesegoods to pass ports of entry before they are examined.

Zhang Zu Man, head ofChina’s XinFaDi agricultural products company, said Chinese consumers’ demandfor fruits and vegetables is increasing in terms of both quantity and quality.Theyare ready to pay more for high-quality food products, he said.

Meanwhile, Vietnam boasts a diversity of tasty tropicalfruits. The two countries’ fruit and vegetable structures are complementary toeach other, so Vietnamese products do not have to directly compete with Chineseones, he noted.

Zhang added that dragon fruit, bananas, lychees,mangoes, and jackfruits from Vietnam are very popular at big markets in China.Additionally, China also has great demand for imported materials to serveagricultural product processing factories, he added.

Xu Zhu, General Director of the Yolego Beijingcompany, pointed out the problem that sellers and buyers of agriculturalproducts, including fruits and vegetables, haven’t been directly connected witheach other. Their transactions are still mainly conducted via intermediaries,costing them more time and expenses, while the quality of farm produce is notensured, he said.

To foster Vietnamese fruit and vegetable exportsto China, businesses of both sides should increase the sharing of marketinformation and set up long-term partnerships. Once they are able to work directlywith each other, they could successfully build production and consumptionchains, in which Vietnamese firms organise their production based on Chinesedemand and standards and have the consumption of their products secured, hesuggested.

Specialists at the forum also recommended that Vietnamesefarmers and exporters improve their product quality and actively meet China’squality and origin traceability requirements to step up exports via officialchannels.–VNA