According to statistics of General Department of Vietnam Customs, tuna export of Vietnam in August reached more than US $ 63 million, up 20% compared to August 2017. Therefore, tuna exports in the first eight months of this year increased 11.6% over the same period in 2017, reaching nearly US $ 420 million.
This growth was contributed by the growth of fresh, frozen, dried and processed tuna loin and tuna fillets comparing to the same period. In addition, the recovery of exports to major markets such as the United States, Japan, Mexico in August can also be included.
The US market
According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers, in the US market, after 6 months of continuous decline, tuna exports to the US have recovered in August. Vietnam tuna export value to US in August reached over US $ 21 million, up 4% compared to August 2017. However, because the increase is not much, so by the end of August 2018, tuna export value of Vietnam to the US still decreased 6.4% over the same period last year, reaching nearly US $ 139 million.
Recently, the US has proposed a further 10% tariff on imports from China, including fresh and frozen skipjack, albacore, yellow fin, big eye and blue fine tuna are subjects to additional taxes. Additional taxes on tuna loins are likely to have a significant impact on the US tuna industry as the US processing plants are heavily relied on cooked Chinese tuna loin. This has led the US to turn to alternative supply sources from countries including Vietnam, causing Vietnamese tuna export to this market is recovering.
The EU market
For the EU market, despite the yellow card, in August, tuna export of Vietnam to the EU continued to grow well. The tuna export value of Vietnam to the EU in August reached US $ 18 million, up nearly 30% compared to August 2017, bringing the total export value in the first eight months to US $ 102 million, up 26% compared to the same period last year.
In EU block, Germany is the largest import market of Vietnam tuna. Tuna export to this market continued to decline compared to early months of this year, but compared to July, it has a slight increase, while exports to the Netherlands and Spain still grew well over the same period. Notably, tuna exports to the Netherlands in August shot up an impressive rate of 166% compared to August 2017.
This year, according to enterprises, although Vietnam is warned by the yellow card, however, thanks to the higher average price of tuna export to EU than last year, the tuna export value to this market is still higher than the same period.
Israel
Continuously growing from March to June, then slowly go down from July, tuna exports to Israel has sharply decreased in August, caused a big decrease in total export value in the first 8 months of this year over the same period. Tuna exports to this market in August only reached US $ 3.3 million, down 29%, bringing the total export value in the first eight months to more than US $ 48 million. Thanks to the good growth in the previous 5 months, the total export value of the eight months is still up 49% over the same period of 2017. And Israel continues to be the third biggest export market of Vietnam.
ASEAN
Export of tuna to ASEAN in August remained good. In particular, the value of tuna exports to the Thai market increased impressively 151% compared to August 2017. As a result, ASEAN continued to be the fourth largest export market of Vietnamese tuna companies with total export value in the first eight months of this year reaching US $ 33 million, up 30% over the same period of 2017.
Huong Tra