Joining free trade agreements (FTAs) requires that people and businesses enhance their management capacity and skills to meet strict technical requirements set on the export of agro-forestry-fishery products, an official has said.

“To that end, quality control at the source plays a very important role,” Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hoang Trung told a conference on Strengthening the State Management of Planting Area Codes and Agricultural Product Packing Facilities for Export, held on August 24.

Vietnam is a signatory to 16 FTAs and is in negotiations over a further three, which present favorable conditions for its agriculture, forestry and fisheries products to approach over 190 countries and territories, the Deputy Minister added.

The country’s exports of agriculture, forestry and fisheries products jumped from $27.4 billion in 2013 to $53.2 billion in 2022, for average annual growth of 9.4 per cent.

A representative from the ministry’s Plant Protection Department said 6,883 planting area codes and 1,588 farm produce packing facility codes have been granted to Vietnam, mostly for mangoes, dragon fruit, longans, rice, and durians. The Mekong Delta leads in the number of codes granted.

However, the rate of post-issuance monitoring of codes for new cultivation areas is only 40.8 per cent and for packaging facilities 17 per cent. These are too low compared to the practical requirement of annual monitoring, the conference heard.

With the aim of increasing the efficiency of the management and supervision of planting area codes and agricultural product packing facility codes for export, the Plant Protection Department has called on localities to direct and allocate sufficient resources for the granting, management, and supervision of such codes, to strengthen post-issuance inspection, and to detect and strictly deal with violations.

It also recommended that localities apply information technology in the management and supply of information on planting area codes and agricultural product packing facility codes to facilitate inspections, supervision, and traceability.