The Covid-19 pandemic is greatly affecting the economic situation, including agricultural exports. Currently, businesses in the agricultural product processing industry of Dong Nai are trying to find new and potential markets in addition to traditional export markets. In particular, the Middle East and Africa markets, which are often overlooked by businesses because of their remote geographical location and unfavorable conditions for export, are now considered as potential export markets, especially for agricultural processed products.
New markets
The Middle East and Africa are relatively new markets with export businesses of agricultural products in Dong Nai. However, according to experts in the field of agricultural exports, in spite of 70 countries and 1.6 billion people, many of them are not in favorable conditions for agricultural development, so these markets have great demand for agricultural import. Recently, Vietnamese agricultural products have been present in these markets but are usually exported via intermediaries. Accordingly, agricultural products are often raw and printed with labels of other countries when exporting, very few packaging labels of exported agricultural products to the above markets are printed with Vietnamese origin.
Mr. Le Thanh Hoa, Deputy Director of Agricultural Products Processing and Market Development Department (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) said: “Exports to the Middle East and African countries over the past 5 years have all reached good growth. This turnover continues to grow positively when the traditional markets become saturated due to the impact of the Covid - 19 pandemic”.
According to Mr. Hoa, 15 countries in the Middle East mostly develop oil and gas resources with very high financial and payment potential. Their import demand for food and vegetables is huge because they are almost not developed in agriculture (except Israel). The demand for food of African countries is very high, these countries are importing a lot of Vietnamese rice. This market is also increasingly potential because the Middle East and African countries are now increasingly attracting immigrants from many places.
Talking more clearly about the potential of the Middle East and Africa markets, Deputy Director of the Asia-Africa Market Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade) Do Quoc Hung commented, the potential of exporting agricultural products, especially vegetables, tubers, and fruits in the Middle East and Africa is still very demanding because the Governments of many of those countries are encouraging people to increase their consumption of vegetables and fruits. Their demand for importing coffee is also very high. Businesses who want to export there are required to painstakingly learn about these markets, especially their culture and tastes.
Cashew nuts are processed
at a processing company in Xuan Loc district
Great demand for processed agricultural products
Mr. Do Quoc Hung further said that Vietnamese agricultural products exported to Africa have are required to go through intermediaries, so their values are still low. Exporters should strengthen cooperation with indigenous businesses in African countries to increase direct export opportunities. Another weakness is that, currently most agricultural products are still produced in the form of raw materials with low prices and values. It is necessary to promote the export of thoroughly processed agricultural products to increase their values.
The most difficult problem in exporting agricultural products to the Middle East and Africa is that this market is quite far from our country, so the transportation time is very long. Accordingly, exporting fresh fruits and vegetables is not an advantage. Currently, businesses are increasingly interested in exporting processed agricultural products such as jam, fruit juice, and dried agricultural products, etc. Vietnam is currently doing a good job of exporting processed products and juices. However, it is still a stage of market exploration, so the opportunity to boost exports is great.
An issue that businesses need to pay attention when exporting to Middle East countries is that many Arab countries are Muslim, our businesses are required for Halal international standards for agricultural products. Mr. Bui Thanh Van, Director of Van Phat Co., Ltd. (Tay Hoa commune, Trang Bom district) advises that over the past time, the production activities of the company have been greatly affected by the Covid - 19 pandemic. The company is expected that export markets will be operate again after the pandemic. In particular, the Middle East countries are always potential markets that businesses are interested in exploiting. That is the reason for which many years ago, the company managed to obtain a Halal certificate for processed products.
Phan Anh
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