HCM City (VNA) – Expandinginternational cooperation will be a key to helping the Vietnamese tuna sectorto create its brand in the global market, according to insiders.

Since 2014, the Directorate of Fisheries underthe Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has supported tuna fishermenand businesses to implement cooperation projects with the Philippines.

The Global Nature Fund and the directorate havecarried out a project improving ocean tuna fishing in the south-central coastalprovinces of Binh Dinh, Phu Yen and Khanh Hoa.

Most recently was the technology cooperation incatching and exporting tuna between Kiyoshi Kimura, a Japanese businessmannicknamed “Tuna King”, and Phu Yen.

Phuoc Dong fishery cooperative group in NhaTrang city, Khanh Hoa province, has connected with businesses to improve tunacatching techniques.

In 2019, Vietnam’s tuna exports exceeded 719million USD, a year-on-year rise of 10.2 percent, according to the VietnamAssociation of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

Exports saw strong growth at the beginning ofthe year but slowed towards the year-end.

Tuna exports to the European Unionearned roughly 140 million USD, down 11.8 percent year-on-year as a consequenceof the EU’s “yellow card” warning issued in October 2017 after the countryfailed to demonstrate sufficient progress in fighting illegal, unreported andunregulated (IUU) fishing.

From the second largest importer of Vietnam’saquatic products, the EU fell to the fifth, behind the US, Japan, the Republicof Korea, and China.

Vietnam has forecast 15-percent growth in tunashipments in 2020 but in the first months of the year, only slight increasesare likely because of the relatively high inventories held by key foreignmarkets./.