Hanoi eyes foreign funds for agriculture
HANOI, - Vietnam is seeking more foreign investment in agriculture to help boost exports of its already successful commodities such as rice and coffee, a senior official said on Monday.
Ngo The Dan, a vice minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said Vietnam needed foreign funds to enhance processing of its commodities and to upgrade machinery.
``We really need to see more foreign investment. We only have $2 billion in approvals so far which is quite small,'' said Dan, one of several vice ministers whose portfolio covers agriculture commodities. Other vice ministers are responsible for areas such as forestry resources or rural development.
``We would like to see more foreign investment in processing and machinery so we can modernise this sector,'' he added.
Dan said foreign investment in agriculture was low compared with the figure for total
approvals, which comprise some $35 billion since Vietnam adopted economic reforms in the late 1980s. Around one third of the total has been disbursed.
Rice and robusta coffee in particular have emerged as two of the communist country's most important exports in recent years, earning precious foreign exchange.
According to a ministry masterplan, Dan said that apart from rice and coffee Vietnam's top commodity exports would be rubber, tea, vegetables, meat and cashew nuts. He also included wood products and marine foods such as shrimp.
He said the government's rice export target for this year was still four million tonnes, from 3.55 million tonnes actually exported in 1997.
But he gave no indication of when a ban on fresh rice export contracts would be lifted, saying it was up to the Trade Ministry to decide.
The ban has been in place since mid-April to ensure food security, although Dan said
Vietnam had sufficient rice stocks. Exports for the year had reached 2.19 million tonnes by the end of April, official figures show.
Dan said the rice crop just planted in southern Vietnam was being affected by drought. This crop is the least important of southern Vietnam's three crops. Two are grown each year in the north.
``Food security should be a top priority. It's most important there is enough food for the people,'' he said.
Dan said estimates before recent rains fell in key coffee areas indicated the current crop would fall by around 25 percent from an original target of 380,000 tonnes due to drought.
This would mean output of some 285,000 tonnes from the crop, which is to be harvested mainly in October-December, with small amounts also in January. Other officials had also predicted a decline in coffee output by some 20-30 percent.
A meteorologist in the key coffee growing province of Daklak said on Monday the wet season there had begun.
``The coffee trees have been receiving rain in recent days which gives us hope. We are still using this figure of a drop of 25 percent because we still don't have any figure for possible recovery,'' he said.
Dan said Vietnam had exported 270,000 tonnes of coffee from the 1997/98 crop. He had no estimate for the amount still held by farmers.
He also reaffirmed earlier plans for Vietnam to cultivate 100,000 hectares (247,100 acres) of higher quality arabica coffee to supplement the ample stocks of robusta coffee under cultivation.
But he said this development, mainly in Vietnam's mountainous northern provinces,
was at the early stages.
By Dean Yates - REUTERS, May 18, 1998.
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