EU adds 30 firms to exporters list

June 1, 2009

Thirty more seafood enterprises were approved to export their products to the European market, the Vietnam National Agro-forestry and Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqad) announced this week.

At present, Vietnam – with 301 seafood exporter firms- is second in the world in terms of the number of seafood firms licensed to export to the European Union (EU), Nhan Dan reports.

An EU delegation that visited Vietnam last month had indicated they would consider adding a further 30 Vietnamese seafood producers to the current list of 301 producers that are licensed to export aquatic products to the EU. The additional 30 firms were added to the list just now.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development requested that Nafiqad and the Department of Aquaculture work with the Department of Fisheries Resources Exploitation and Protection to find solutions on how to fulfil EU aquaculture and fishing area standards.

Last month, Luong Le Phuong, deputy minister of Agriculture, advised domestic producers not to repeat the mistakes of neighbours Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The EU suspended seafood imports from Malaysia, decided to rigorously check Indonesia’s products and issued several warnings to Thailand.

The Ministry further recommended that seafood production and exporting firms abide by EU regulations in order to avoid possible rejection of their products.

As the biggest importer of Vietnamese seafood, the EU accounts for 25.4 per cent of its total fisheries export turnover. In 2008, 26 of 27 EU countries imported 350,000 tonnes of seafood worth over USD 1 billion from Vietnam last year.

Source: FIS

Posted in Fisheries, News