Hundreds of growing area codes have been warned, and the situation of borrowing and selling codes remains complex, becoming a major barrier to agricultural exports while threatening the reputation of Vietnamese goods in many international markets.

The bottleneck of agricultural exports

China's official opening for Vietnamese pomelos and fresh limes for official export is considered a major opportunity for the agricultural sector. Immediately after the export Protocol was signed, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development along with localities deployed training and guidance for enterprises and farmers to satisfy the technical requirements of the importing market.

However, to utilize this opportunity, one of the most urgent issues at present is accelerating the progress of issuing and managing growing area codes.

Vietnam currently has about 106,000 hectares of pomelo with a potential output of more than 1 million tons per year. Key pomelo varieties such as Da Xanh and Nam Roi are evaluated to possess high competitiveness in the international market.

According to Mr. Hoang Trung, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, one of the causes leading to violations is the limited awareness of a segment of localities, enterprises, and producers. Many places still view growing area codes merely as a “passport” for immediate export without focusing on maintaining technical standards after the codes are issued.

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tung, Chairman of Vina T&T Group, argued that Vietnamese pomelos are standing before a massive opportunity in the Chinese market thanks to advantages in quality and variety diversity. However, the largest bottleneck at present lies precisely in growing area codes.

According to Mr. Tung, the number of issued codes remains much lower than actual demand. This easily leads to the situation of utilizing codes against regulations, triggering the paradox where “places with codes lack goods, while places with goods do not yet have codes.”

Currently, the authority to issue growing area codes has been decentralized to localities. Nevertheless, across many key export commodity sectors, the number of issued codes has still not met demand. This is also one of the causes leading to fraud in code utilization, directly affecting the reputation of Vietnamese agricultural products.

Ms. Ngo Tuong Vy, Deputy General Director of Chanh Thu Fruit Import Export Company Limited, stated that the enterprise is urgently deploying the requirements within the export Protocol to China, including finalizing growing area codes and complying with regulations on bagging pomelo fruits prior to harvest.

According to Ms. Vy, the bagging requirement is not overly difficult as it has been applied to many other crop types. What the enterprise worries about is that the progress of processing dossiers is still slow, particularly after the code issuance was decentralized to the grassroots level.

Not only enterprises, but management agencies also admit that the management of growing area codes and packing facilities is confronting numerous challenges.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, up to May 2026, the entire country had 9,546 growing area codes and 1,525 packing facility codes serving the export of various fresh fruits to multiple markets such as China, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea.

However, from 2025 until now, 403 growing area codes and 240 packing facility codes have been warned by the Chinese side due to non-compliance with regulations. This figure reflects shortcomings in maintaining technical conditions, quality control, and traceability across many localities.

Reality indicates that the situation of misusing codes, borrowing codes, or leasing codes still takes place quite commonly. Meanwhile, the inspection and monitoring capacity in a number of localities remains limited, and testing and food safety control work are uneven.

Lam Dong is a typical example. The locality currently has 961 growing area codes with a total area of more than 39,360 hectares and 362 packing facility codes. For durian alone, there are 346 growing area codes with an area of approximately 13,000 hectares, equivalent to nearly 60% of the area currently yielding harvest.

At the Conference on managing growing areas and packing facilities serving durian export for the 2026 crop season, Mr. Vu Dinh Cuong, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Lam Dong province, stated that there remains a situation where farming households have not fully complied with technical processes, recording production logs formalistically or utilizing plant protection drugs against regulations.

Notably, the situation of “borrowing codes” and “selling codes” for growing areas and packing facilities persists, harboring multiple risks for traceability activities and export reputation.

According to Mr. Cường, authorizing code utilization among farmers, cooperatives, and enterprises currently still lacks a clear legal binding mechanism. When violations occur leading to code revocation, determining the responsibility of each party encounters many difficulties.

In a context where importing markets are increasingly tightening requirements on traceability and plant quarantine, signing new Protocols is merely the step of opening the market door.

The more important thing is constructing a raw material zone system that is transparent, standard-compliant, and sustainably controlled.

Resolving the bottleneck to retain export markets

To tighten management work, the Government promulgated Decree No. 38/2026/NĐ-CP, creating a legal corridor for the issuance, management, and monitoring of growing area codes and packing facilities.

The Decree clearly prescribes the responsibilities of parties from the code issuance and field inspection stages to monitoring, warning, and revoking violating codes. Notably, the management mindset is shifting from the goal of “issuing many codes” to “maintaining sustainable codes,” placing the focus on raw material zone quality and the capacity to control the entire supply chain.

The pilot traceability system for durian has also been deployed and is expected to be applied synchronously from mid-2026.

At the meeting on the management of growing areas, packing facilities, and testing of exported agricultural products, Deputy Prime Minister Ho Quốc Dũng requested the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to review all related regulations, timely amending shortcomings to facilitate conditions for localities and enterprises.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the processes of issuing growing area codes, packing facility codes, and testing need to continue to be simplified in a transparent and convenient direction while still ensuring tight control. Concurrently, it is necessary to step up decentralization and delegation of power tied to local responsibilities.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was also assigned to coordinate with Chinese functional agencies to promote the approval of growing area codes, packing facility codes, and the recognition of Vietnam's testing laboratories; while accelerating digital transformation and building shared databases on a nationwide scale.

For localities, the established requirement is to enhance management resources, build growing area maps, and support enterprises and farmers to maintain technical standards according to importing market requirements.

From the enterprise perspective, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tung argued that growing area codes need to be viewed as the “land use rights certificate” of raw material zones.

According to him, the code system must be prepared from the management foundation of the locality instead of only being deployed when enterprises or cooperatives generate export demands.

Meanwhile, Ms. Ngo Tuong Vy stated that the enterprise is proactively linking raw material zones in a direction where wherever standards are met, codes will be registered accordingly. However, for the deployment process to be more efficient, it is necessary to raise the capacity of the grassroots-level official workforce, who directly receive and process dossiers.

In Lam Dong, the agricultural sector is continuing to review and finalize dossiers to expand the area granted codes, targeting the goal of 100% of qualified areas being granted export codes. Simultaneously, the locality is enhancing inspections on the maintenance of export conditions and guiding people to apply safe production processes such as VietGAP, GlobalGAP, and organic.

It can be seen that growing area codes are no longer merely a technical condition for export, but are becoming the foundation ensuring reputation and branding for Vietnamese agricultural products. To firmly maintain markets in the long term, the equation set out is not just issuing additional codes, but also constructing a management system that is transparent, synchronous, and capable enough to control the entire production chain, from raw material zones to packing, testing, and traceability.

Source: Bao Tai chinh - Dau tu