On March 4, 2020 in Hanoi, VCCI Vice President Hoang Quang Phong awarded the certificates of merit of VCCI President to seven units for their valuable contributions to the construction of the revised Labor Code 2019. The awardees included the Vietnam Electronic Industries Association (VEIA), the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas), the Vietnam Leather, Footwear and Handbag Association (Lefaso), the Food and Foodstuff Association of Ho Chi Minh City (FFA), the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) and the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham).

(seafood.vasep.com.vn) Australia was the seventh largest shrimp importer of Vietnam, accounting for 3.8% of Vietnam's total shrimp export value to markets. After declining in 2018, Vietnamese shrimp exports to Australia in 2019 grew positively.

Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, scheduled to take place 15 to 17 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., has been postponed by the event’s organizer, Diversified Communications.

The Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification program continued to grow in 2019, with 2,681 BAP-certified processing plants, farms, hatcheries and feed mills worldwide by the end of the year. That’s up almost 15 percent from the program’s 2018 count, according to the GAA’s annual report.

Relations between the EU and some ASEAN member states have been tense in recent years because of the seafood trade, stemming from the European Commission’s (EC) sanctions related to the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. As Chair of ASEAN 2020, Vietnam hopes to promote cooperation among ASEAN member states and address this issue to actively contribute towards better ASEAN-EU trade relations.

(seafood.vasep.com.vn) In 2020, Kien Giang province strives to reach 85,000 MT of shrimp production, providing raw materials for processing and exports, with a total shrimp farming area of about 120,000 hectares.

(seafood.vasep.com.vn) From traditional farming area, now pangasius farmers have boldly invested, converted to production under the model of Good Agricultural Practice (GAP).

(seafood.vasep.com.vn) The EU accounted for 66% of Vietnam's total export value of bivalve mollusk to markets. Portugal, Spain and Italia were the three main importers of Vietnamese bivalve mollusk representing for 80% export value to the EU. In the third quarter, exports to these three markets increased sharply by 68%, 13% and 45%. Therefore, exports to the EU grew by 35% in the third quarter and 8.6% in the first 9 months.

(seafood.vasep.com.vn) In the first 7 months of 2019, total white fish imports of Russia still rose by 12.43% over the same period in 2018. In particular, imports of cod and pollock still grew well; Imports of frozen pangasius fillets (HS 0304) increased slightly by nearly 3%, while imports of frozen pangasius (HS code 0303) declined sharply by more than 29%.

(seafood.vasep.com.vn) Import of processed and canned tuna into Germany in the first nine months of this year was bleak, mainly due to the decrease in imports from non-EU countries. According to the statistics of the International Trade Center (ITC), in the first 9 months of 2019 tuna imports into this market decreased by 29% over the same period in 2018.