Vietnam Eyes More Seafood Sales to S.Korea with FTA
Vietnam is expected to witness a sharp increase in seafood shipments to South Korea as the latter offers duty-free import quotas to some ASEAN seafood products from next year, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Fisheries (MoF).
South Korea will offer annual duty-free import quotas to some seafood products of ASEAN member countries from January 1, 2007 when the ASEAN – South Korea Free Trade Area Agreement comes into effect.
Under the agreement, South Korea will remove import tariffs on 5,000 tons of frozen processed shrimp, 300 tons of frozen unprocessed shrimp, and around 2,000 tons of cuttlefish.
Seafood imports exceeding the quota will be subject to preferential tariffs.
Vietnamese fisheries officials said this is a good opportunity for Vietnamese businesses boost seafood exports to this potential market.
The Korean National Fisheries Products Quality Inspection Service under the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries recently licensed an additional 13 Vietnamese enterprises to export their seafood products to the country, bringing the total number of qualified firms to 298.
Vietnam has exported US$8 million worth of shrimp, cuttlefish, octopus, and frozen fish to the East Asian nation so far this year.
The domestic fisheries sector plans to ship 25 per cent of the nation’s total seafood exports to Japan, 23-25 per cent to the US, 20-22 per cent to the European Union, 7-9 per cent to China, including Hong Kong, and 8 per cent to South Korea in the next four years.
Vietnamese
