In the first 5 months of 2024, according to VASEP, Vietnam's two largest tuna export markets are the US and EU respectively with a total turnover proportion of 60%.

According to VASEP, tuna export turnover continues to maintain growth momentum in May 2024, up 21% over the same period last year (YoY). Cumulatively in the first 5 months of 2024, Vietnam's tuna exports reached more than 386 million USD, up 22% YoY.

Of which, canned tuna products increased by 41% YoY, other processed tuna increased by 12% YoY; Frozen tuna meat/loin increased 7% YoY and fresh, frozen and dried tuna increased nearly 3 times over the same period in 2023.

In general, Vietnam's tuna exports to most markets will increase compared to the same period in 2023. Accordingly, the two largest markets are the US and EU, accounting for 37% and 23% of total tuna exports in the first 5 months of 2024 and recording increases of 22% YoY and 36% YoY, respectively.

In addition, tuna exports to Israel, Russia and Korea had the strongest increase, 55% YoY, 70% YoY and 76% YoY respectively.

"Knot" in raw materials

According to VASEP, in the structure of tuna export value in recent years; More than 50% of the value is created from imported raw materials because domestic exploitation does not meet the demand for export processing and is unstable.

Meanwhile, many businesses are complaining about the difficulty of making raw material certification (S/C) of domestically exploited raw materials.

VASEP believes that there are many reasons why businesses purchasing raw materials are not granted S/C due to some problems in previous stages that are difficult for businesses to know clearly; such as the issue of confirming food safety conditions for fishing vessels or the issue of fishing vessels operating in waters that do not comply with regulations...; Or in the last 2-3 months, quite a few fishing vessels installed with monitoring systems via the telecommunications network have continuously failed, causing the vessel to lose connection to cruise monitoring for 6 hours or more; Some ships take up to 2-3 days, directly affecting the business's S/C paper making process.

According to VASEP, if the above shortcomings are resolved, by 2024 Vietnam's tuna industry will have a chance to return to the billion USD mark.

Source: Mekongasean