(vasep.com.vn) Till the middle of November 2012, Vietnam shrimp shipment reduced by 4.8 percent compared to the same period of 2011. Among 10 main importing markets of Vietnam shrimp, shrimp exports from Vietnam to the U.S. tumbled 16.1 percent, exports to EU down 25.2 percent, Canada down 13.8 percent, Switzerland down 10.4 percent and ASEAN down 21.5 percent.
Low demand from foreign markets along with short raw shrimp supply in the domestic market prevented Vietnam shrimp exports from soaring up in the year-end.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) stated that, the imports of shrimp in all varieties into the U.S. in the first 9 months of 2012 dropped from 404,294 MT to 381,425 MT, a year-on-year decrease of 5.7 percent.
September is the fourth consecutive month when shrimp imports into the market saw a sharp reduction of 20.7 percent in which imports from most of main shrimp suppliers witness a drastic decline.
Shrimp imports from Malaysia reported the strongest decrease of 45.2 percent, imports from Thailand, Vietnam and China fell by 32.1 percent, 34.5 percent and 35.2 percent, respectively. Among 9 main shrimp suppliers for the U.S., India is the only supplier reporting the growth in exporting shrimp to the U.S. in September 2012.
Shrimp imports into the U.S. sank due to low demand for shrimp consumption and high shrimp inventories in the U.S.
Due to Japan’s Ethoxyquin test on imported shrimp, India appears to make effort to export its shrimp to the U.S. India is trying to solve “Ethoxyquin problem” with Japan. Currently, the U.S. is still the most important market of shrimp originating from India in the year-end period.
Till the middle of November 2012, Vietnam shrimp exports to Japan marked a growth of 6.3 percent, much lower compared to the average monthly growth of 20 percent in the early months of this year.
Shrimp exports to Japan were heavily affected by Japan’s Ethoxyquin test with very low residue of 0.01 ppm on Vietnam shrimp consignments in some recent months. Ethoxyquin testing will continue to badly affect on Vietnam shrimp exports to the market in the late months of this year and the next year.
100 Vietnam shrimp exporters with over 500,000 workers are directly hit by the inspection. To many exporters, Japan takes over 60 percent of their total shrimp exports.
Many shrimp exporters stopped exporting their products to the market. Others which tried to remain export to the market must purchase extensively farmed shrimp for processing and spend a lot of money on testing this antioxidant in raw shrimp and finished shrimp.
In many past years, Canada was one of the key markets of Vietnam shrimp. In 2011, Canada was the sixth largest importer of Vietnam shrimp with export turnover of US$82.9 million. Through November 15th 2012, Canada was downgraded to the eighth position among top 10 largest importers of Vietnam shrimp.