Workers of the Trung An Hi-tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company in Cần Thơ City work on an assembly packaging rice for exports. VNA/VNS Photo Vũ SInh

HCM CITY – After a decline in output and exports in the second and third quarters due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many industries have seen a rebound in exports and strong growth since October.

Trung An Hi-tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company in Cần Thơ City said it has signed a contract to export 15,000 tonnes of rice to South Korea.

The company has opened a representative office in Hamburg, Germany, to exploit the EU market since the import tariffs on Vietnamese rice have been reduced under the EU-Việt Nam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), Phạm Thái Bình, its general director, said.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Đặng Hoàng An said the EVFTA would help Việt Nam participate in the process of restructuring supply chains with EU partners.

After a long period of production suspension or reduction in output, seafood processing companies are recovering, but cannot keep up with export demand as orders keep coming.

The Minh Phú Seafood Corporation has been active again since October with its three processing plants with a capacity of 18,000 tonnes a year each and a packaging plant with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes.

In the third quarter, the company's revenues fell by 36.7 per cent year-on-year to VNĐ2.78 trillion despite a sharp rise in export prices as demand surged in major markets.

Lê Văn Điệp, its deputy general director, said that the fourth outbreak of the coronavirus, with the Delta variant spreading in the south, disrupted supply chains, including in the shrimp industry.

Shrimp processing plants in the Mekong Delta had to house their workers and comply with other restrictions, which reduced their capacity by 30-70 per cent, meaning they could not fulfill customers’ orders, leading to a decrease in revenues, he added.

The Việt Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers said after declining for two consecutive months, the country’s seafood exports rose by 47 per cent in October to US$918 million.

In the first nine months, they rose by 2.4 per cent year-on-year to $7.1 billion.

Đỗ Xuân Lập, chairman of the Việt Nam Timber and Forest Products Association, said the recovery by businesses supplying wood products has been faster than predicted.

In the first 10 months of the year, exports of wood and wood products jumped by 23.4 per cent year-on-year to nearly $12 billion, he said.

Now that the pandemic is being controlled gradually, wood processing hubs such as HCM City and Bình Dương, Đồng Nai and Tây Ninh provinces are recovering rapidly, he said.

“This is a very positive sign for the industry.”

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, exports of agricultural, forestry and fishery products in October were worth $3.4 billion, up 4.2 per cent from September.

Exports for the year were worth $38.75 billion, up 13.1 per cent, it said.

If this pace is maintained in the remaining two months of 2021, the export target of $44 billion is completely feasible, it added. – VNS