Up in Vietnam processed cephalopod exports to ASEAN

Except for June, since February this year, Vietnam’s exports of cephalopod to ASEAN witnessed a two-digit year-on-year growth.

At present, ASEAN was the 4^th biggest buyer of Vietnam, representing 11.5% of total cephalopod export value.

ASEAN increased imports of squid from Vietnam. Vietnam squid sales to ASEAN took up over 95% of total cephalopod exports to the market.

Among ASEAN, Thailand was the major market for Vietnam cephalopod with about 77% of total cephalopod exported to the region. In other words, Vietnam’s cephalopod exports to Thailand have been increasing. In the first 10 months of 2017, Thailand imported more than US$44 million of Vietnam cephalopod, rising by 36.3% year on year.

According to statistics of ITC, among ASEAN, Thailand was the biggest importer of cephalopod from all over the world. The cephalopod import value of this country in the first 9 months of 2017 took up 43.2% of total imports into ASEAN and amounted up to US$60 million. However, cephalopod imports into Thailand appears to be decreasing recently, with a total fall of nearly 76% compared to the same period last year. Among two biggest cephalopod suppliers to Thailand, including Vietnam and China, while its imports from Vietnam increased, those from China decreased considerably.

Frozen squid (HS code 030749) was the product with the highest import value in ASEAN; followed by processed squid (HS code 160554), processed octopus (HS code 160555) and fresh/live/frozen octopus (HS code 030751). Among all, frozen squid accounted for the highest share of 71% of total cephalopod import value of ASEAN, while all the rest took up less than 10% individually. Remarkably, total import value of processed cephalopod into ASEAN increased dramatically in the first half of the year.