EVFTA promotes Vietnam's rice exports to EU
PSNews - Thanks to the EU - Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), Vietnam exported 22,500 tonnes of rice to the EU for nearly 18 million USD in the first quarter of 2022, roughly a four-fold increase in both volume and value compared to the same period last year.
In the first four months of this year, Vietnam's rice exports reached 1.48 million tonnes, earning 715 million USD, up 24 percent in volume and 10.5 percent in value on year.
The rice exports to the EU in this quarter reached over 30,000 tonnes, earning the country some 23 million USD, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Agency of Foreign Trade.
Italy rose to the top of EU importers, with spending on Vietnamese rice surging 26-fold year-on-year. Other major buyers included Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden.
According to the commitments from the EVFTA, the EU gives Vietnam an export quota of 80,000 tonnes of rice per year to the EU, including 30,000 tonnes of milled rice, 20,000 tonnes of unmilled rice and 30,000 tonnes of aromatic rice. Especially, the EU will not apply a quota for broken rice exported from Viet Nam.
The ministry said Vietnam could export 100,000 tonnes of all kinds of rice to the EU every year.
Besides, the EU will cut the tariff for rice to zero within 3-5 years from the date of entry into force of the EVFTA. This opens up opportunities for Vietnamese rice to compete with other countries' rice products exported to the EU.
In 2021, the EU imported 3.6 million tonnes of rice, 1.6 million tonnes were traded within the bloc, and two million tonnes were imported from other countries.
Meanwhile, Vietnam has not yet met the full rice export quota provided by the EU for 2021, thus still has plenty of room to increase rice exports to this market. One of the reasons why Vietnam did not use all rice quotas is that less than 20 percent of domestic businesses know clearly about the EVFTA.
According to VCCI, besides the advantages of the EVFTA, enterprises must also improve the quality of Vietnamese rice and change their measures in approaching the market to expand market share. With high and stable demand for speciality rice from Asia, the EU will be a potential export market for Vietnamese rice in the future.
