Though having to face a lot of difficulties from new regulations of EU and other big markets, in the first months of 2009, Vietnamese pangasius still holds its position in global market.
 

Vasep announces that: exporting pangasius in the first six months has reached 57,918 tonnes with the value of 126.873 million USD which increases 7.4% in terms of volume and 4.5% in terms of value. Thus, in the first 6 months of the year, export pangasius has reached the production of 266,258 tonnes with the value of 604.749 million USD. The leading position is still American market with the developing rate of 60.4%, the second is Mexico with 39.9% and Holland with 39.7%. Among leading enterprises in exporting pangasius are Vinh Hoan company with 46.6 million USD, Hung Vuong company with 45.2 million USD and Navico with 37.6 million USD…

The main reason that makes the turnover of exporting pangasius to recover is the demand of pangasius in EU market has been increased after some months of decreasing. In June, exporting pangasius to this market reached 20,644 tonnes with the value of 51.585 million USD which increased 26.7% and 19.4% compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, the price of Vietnamese pangasius exported to EU has increased in the recent two months over first months of the year. Especially, after Vietfish fair, Vietnam has signed an agreement with Russis that the production of pangasius imported to this market will be added 10,000 tonnes in the four last months of 2009. Bianfishco company will export more than 50 containers frozen pangasius to America in this August. From this positive signs, Vasep predicts that the export turnover of this product will reach 1,2 billion USD.

However, farming pangasius still has to face a lot of difficulties in continuously increasing feed price and many farmers cannot borrow capital for farming. This causes many households of farming pangasius in Cuu Long Delta to farm in low density and feed perfunctorily. They do not dare to invest much money in farming procedure and as a result material fish becomes rare. This situation makes factories of processing seafood work with 30-40% the capacity due to lack of materials though machines are very modern.

Besides those difficulties, the problems of SPS law (quarantine animals law) and some laws of food in general and seafood in particular that EU is applying have caused serious difficulties for Vietnamese export enterprise because IUU law (law about seafood with stricter provisions) will be enforced widely on January 1, 2010. The deadline is not enough for Vietnam to meet the demands of EU because in fact, Vietnamese catching industry has small scale and the skills of farmers are limited. Thus, it is very difficult to be certificated of each batch of seafood. If obeying regulations of IUU law, Vietnam has to have 2-3 years.

Furthermore, US Department of Agriculture has not decided whether Vietnamese pangasius is included in catfish or not. Meanwhile, EU and US are among largest seafood markets of our country. All of these difficulties force Vietnamese seafood exporters to invest and maintain the business properly and have to meet the regulations of EU as well as negotiate with US Ministry of Agriculture to define catfish soon.

However, to meet these regulations better, agencies and enterprises have to collaborate. Being so, in 2009, pangasius export can reach 1.2 billion USD.