(vasep.com.vn) European buyers have been more interested in buying Vietnam pangasius products for domestic consumption as the region is under pressures of financial stress due to public debts, which made local consumers turn to seafood products with good quality and reasonable price.

How did pangasius win such huge popularity in the Netherlands, a nation with historically low seafood consumption?

(vasep.com.vn) With nearly 70 exporting and processing companies in which their processing facilities are equipped modern equipments and controlled in accordance with HACCP, Vietnamese pangasius products are being exported to 145 countries and territories worldwide such as EU, the U.S., ASEAN, Canada, the Middle East, China, Japan, etc. Fish export volume and value to markets reported steady annual growth of 10 - 18 percent, worth by US$1.8 - 2 billion per year in two recent years.

(vasep.com.vn) Vietnam’s pangasius sector got year-on-year drop in export to Russia in the third quarter and the first nine months of 2012. The industry reported US$12.4 million of pangasius sales to Russia in the second quarter of 2012, while it reached US$18.01 million in the same quarter of 2011.

(vasep.com.vn) In 2012, Vinafish Import Export Corporation (Vinafish Corp) targets to gain US$15 million from pangasius sales abroad. In the first three quarters of the year, the company totaled nearly US$10 million of revenue; so it needs to speed up exporting panga in the last three months of the year and earn further US$5 million to reach the yearly target.

(vasep.com.vn) Between January and August 2012, An Giang, a Mekong Delta province, reached pangasius seed breeding area of 373 hectares, equal to 89 percent of that reported in the same time last year. The seed output reached only 383 million seeds, equal to 87 percent.

The Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development has called for pangasius production to be added to a list of conditional pangasiusding sectors, after submitting a draft decree to the Government.

(vasep.com.vn) On 15 October 2012, Queens Products from Varsseveld, the Netherlands celebrated the 10th anniversary of pangasius in the Netherlands. All families of Varsseveld were invited to pick up a free jubilee bag of pangasius between 9:20 and 10:10, in the temporary Panga drive-in. More than 300 bags with the popular pangasius were distributed by the CEO of Vinh Hoan, Ms. Truong Thi Le Khanh, the commercial attaché of the Vietnamese Embassy in the Netherlands, Mr. H. Giam Dao and the General Manager of Queens Products, Harry Hoogendoorn.

Myronivsky Hliboproduct wants to work with Vietnamese exporter Anvifish to introduce pangasius into Ukraine. Ukrainian agribusiness company Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP) wants to invest in Vietnam's pangasius farms, according to its director Yuriy Kosyuk.

(vasep.com.vn) State-owned commercial banks in four pangasius producing provinces in Mekong Delta (An Giang, Dong Thap, Vinh Long and Can Tho) still reported high level of outstanding loans offered to insiders in pangasius aquaculture and processing sector, according to Nguyen Huy Dien, Deputy General Director of Vietnam Directorate of Fisheries (D-Fish) after his trip for preliminary assessments of the effects of government policy to help fish growers get out of economic difficulties.