The Vietnamese fisheries and aquaculture sector is aiming to maintain current levels of production and exports of pangasius so that the industry can improve the quality and develop the sustainability of production.
The action by the Directorate of Fisheries and the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) over the next two years will see mpore of the production achieve sustainable accreditation.
Already the sector, which has a large presence at the Global Seafood Expo in Brussels this week, says that a great number of producers are applying to the VietGAP accreditation for pangasius.
The fisheries directorate says the requirements for VietGAP are the same as for the other interenational standards such as GlobalGAP, ASC and BAP.
At the expo this week leading Vietnamese company Hoang Long is the one company claiming Aquaculture Stewardship Council accreditation for its tilapia and pangasius production.
The company hopes to be BAP certified shortly as it is going through all the auditing procedures for accreditation.
The move by more and more producers to seek sustainability and quality accreditation is helping the Vietnamese seafood production find new markets in countries such as the EU, USA and Japan according to VASEP.
Starting last year and running through to 2017, the Vietnamese pangasius industry is being supported and co-funded by the EU is a project called Switch Asia which aims to have a sustainable pangasius supply chain in the country by 2020.
The Vietnamese pangasius sector accounts for about 25 per cent of the total volume of the country’s seafood export turnover and it is about 95 per cent of the global total export market for the fish valued at $1.8 billion.
