Hanoi (VNA)𓃲 – More than 70 foreign importers participated in an international business matching webinar on August 13 in order to seek suitable partnerships with local traders in the trading of longan.

The importers were from eight markets of Vietnam’s longan, which are India, Australia, the Republic of Korea, the US, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and China. On the Vietnamese side, there were representatives from over 30 farms, cooperatives and trading companies in eight localities, namely Lang Son, Son La, Hung Yen, Bac Giang and Hanoi in the north, and Ben Tre, Binh Duong and Ho Chi Minh City in the south. Son La and Hung Yen are the two largest longan-growing provinces in the north, accounting for 30 percent of the total acreage under the fruit tree at present.

Stepping up trade promotion

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai told the online gathering that the quality of Vietnamese longan and related products, like dried longan and canned longan juice, has improved over time and are now found in major markets such as China, Australia, the US, Singapore, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East. This means locally-grown longan’s quality has been recognised and can win over other demanding markets, he said

Hai views the export potential of the country’s fresh longan and related products as substantial.

🌺 Localities with large areas of concentrated longan growing like Hung Yen, Son La, and Hai Duong provinces have been perfecting their production processes and developing standardised cultivation zones to boost exports, he added.

According to the People’s Committee of Hung Yen, the province has 4,600 ha under longan in 2020, producing a total 50,000 tonnes of fruit. Vice Chairman of the committee Bui The Cu said the provincial authorities had built a marketing plan at the beginning of the harvesting season, aiming to sell the fruit in other localities and export to some markets such as the US, Japan, Australia and China. However, the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic had hampered the plan, he said, calling for help from the central government, other sectors, distributors and processors as well as consumers. “We will coordinate closely with and assist companies, traders both in and outside the country to connect with longan-growing farms and cooperatives in order to take Hung Yen longan to customers all over the world,” Cu said. He added that the provincial authorities will also work with transport and logistics businesses to assist with the transportation of longan and customs clearance at border gates so as to reduce time and costs. According to Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Do Thang Hai, the quality of longan and products made from the fruit has increasingly improved. Fresh longan of Vietnam has made its entry into many big markets such as Australia and the US, having met strict requirements on origin tracing, production steps and for-export processing. Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh required longan growing localities to continue building value chains in longan cultivation. He said local authorities should create favourable for foreign traders, especially those  from China, to visit and conduct surveys of longan farms, towards signing official buying contracts with local suppliers. “Localities should design policy to encourage investment into fruit processing in order to increase products’ added value and raise farmers’ income,” Doanh said. Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development showed China is an important market for Vietnam’s fruit, consuming more than 70 percent of all fruit export revenue. Vietnam and China have reached agreement on the official shipment to China of nine kinds of fruit from Vietnam. Deputy Minister Doanh said the ministry is coordinating with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to negotiate the opening up of more markets for Vietnamese longan and other fruit./.