Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) said that Vietnam has been selected by Japanese companies to partner in processing products for export to various markets such as the United States and ASEAN countries.
The selection of Vietnam as a partner is due to Vietnam’s rapidly growing seafood processing industry.
Vietnam is also considered to have an advantage in processing seafood with many large-capacity processing plants that meet export standards for most global markets.
“Japanese seafood companies want to strengthen cooperation by contracting Vietnamese partners to process products to be exported to other markets,” said MAFF representative Yoshimatsu Toru, as reported by VNA on Friday.
According to Yoshimatsu, by 2023, Japan’s total export turnover of agroforestry-aquatic and food products will reach around 1.45 trillion Japanese yen (approx. USD $152.8 trillion). The Japanese government has set a target to increase this figure to 2 trillion Japanese yen (approximately Rp210.7 trillion) by 2025 and 5 trillion Japanese yen (approximately Rp562.9 trillion) by 2030.
The Japanese government is currently carrying out activities to promote Japanese aquatic products both domestically and internationally, as well as to diversify export markets.
The business matching event is expected to further enhance seafood trade exchanges and supply chain development cooperation between the two countries.
Japan’s fishing industry is diversifying export destinations to reduce dependence on China, which has banned imports of Japanese seafood due to the release of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
China began banning imports of Japanese fishery products from August 24, 2023. According to Japan’s annual fisheries white paper for fiscal 2022, scallop sales represented about a quarter of Japan’s seafood exports and more than half were previously exported to China.