VietNamNet Bridge – Russian agencies have blamed a drop in seafood imports from Vietnam on the low quality of products but Vietnam maintains this is a biased assessment.

The Vietnam News Agency earlier this month quoted Pham Quang Niem, Vietnamese Trade Counsellor to Russia, as saying that now was the right time for Vietnamese enterprises to increase exports to Russia as the country’s enterprises are facing a ban on importing food from a number of European countries.

In the latest news, Russia has lifted the ban on temporarily importing seafood from Vietnam, allowing some more Vietnamese enterprises to export seafood products to the market.

This has encouraged seafood exporters to focus on developing the Russian market. However, it turns out to be very difficult to do.

Reports all showed a sharp decrease in farm and seafood produce to Russia in recent years. Prior to 2009, the products accounted for 50-60 percent of Vietnam’s exports to Russia but the proportion has dropped to 10 percent.

Nguyen Binh Giang, a senior official of the Import & Export Department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT), noted that in many cases, Russia’s standards were even higher than that of European countries.

“The requirements on food hygiene and product quarantine set by Russia on Vietnamese farm produce are very strict,” Giang said.

Prior to that, Russian Trade Representative in Vietnam Maxim Golikov also said at a meeting with MOIT and Vietnamese exporters that Vietnamese products were not good enough to enter the Russian market.

However, Dr Le Quoc Phuong, deputy director of the MOIT’s Industry and Trade Information Center, disagrees, saying that the quality requirements set by Russia are either equal to or even lower than that of the US, EU or Japan.

“Some analysts attribute the low exports to Russia to overly high requirements set by the importer. However, this is not true. I believe this is just a false barrier,” he said, adding that Vietnam’s seafood products still were accepted by the EU, one of the most selective markets in the world.

Russia’s market door wide-open

According to Nguyen Hoai Nam, deputy secretary general of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), the association has many times sent Russian agencies a list of Vietnamese companies that want to export seafood products to Russia. However, the Russian side has not accepted it.

Information on Russian agencies’ requirements on products can be found on the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s website.

Vietnamese enterprises, which can satisfy the requirements from the agencies (who are buyers), can register to export products. However, Nam said, the Russian side permits only some Vietnamese enterprises to export products.

“Their (Russian) assessments are sometimes not unbiased, which has displeased Vietnamese enterprises,” he said.

Thanh Mai