Vietnam: WTO egg import quotas granted

Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade has given permission for the importation of 500,000 egg products, dealing a severe blow to Vietnam’s domestic egg production industry.

Vietnam has commitments to the WTO, among them having to grant import quotas of 360,000 eggs per year, and the number of eggs increasing by 5% per year. The quota has been in place in since 2007.

The eggs have to be cooked through before importation.

The move has left farmers stupefied, given that poultry eggs have been in a state of oversupply and the prices have been decreasing.

Nguyen Thanh Son, Deputy Director of the Animal Husbandry Department of MARD, said that poultry egg prices have dropped by 47-48 %, farmers are incurring a loss of 500 dong (€0.019) per egg.

In the first six months of 2012, about 4 billion poultry eggs were produced, a 5% increase in comparison with the same period of the last year.

In the north, chicken eggs which were sold at 1700 dong (€0.065) in January 2012 have dropped to 900 dong (€0.034). Meanwhile, merchandise duck eggs have seen the price drop from 2400 dong (€0.092) to 1500 dong (€0.057).

The prices are even lower in the south, pushing farmers out the market and many households giving up farming.

Vietnam’s food security
With many households giving up farming, and the accompanying recent global increase in feed prices, the Vietnamese government is worried that domestic food shortages may be lurking in the future.

A big worry has been raised that with the permission to import cooked-through eggs, enterprises would import processed eggs in masses from China, which they would use to make moon cakes and other kinds of ready-made foodstuff products.

Source: Vietnam net