HCM City (VNA) – A seminar was held in Ho ChiMinh City on December 11 to help local businesses gain an insight into theRepublic of Korea’s (RoK) regulations on plant protection product residues onfarm produce exported to this market.

Kim Ki-joon, President of the Korea Trade-InvestmentPromotion Agency (KOTRA) for Southeast Asia-Oceania, said after the Vietnam-RoKFree Trade Agreement took effect in December 2015, bilateral trade, includingin agricultural products, has enjoyed impressive growth.

However, the RoK also applies high quarantinestandards for imported animal, plant, and food products, and many Vietnameseexporters have faced difficulties in meeting its quarantine requirements, henoted.

Nguyen Thanh Huong, an official at the PlantProtection Department (PPD) under the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment, said that the plant protection products which pose high risks tohuman and animal health and the environment include chemicals warned by theFood and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Health Organisation (WHO),the UN Environmental Programme, and Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention;products containing pathogenic microorganisms; and those causing geneticmutation or cancer for humans.

Since 2017, the PPD has reviewed and removedsome chemicals likely to affect human and animal health and the environmentfrom the list of permitted ones, including acephate, diazinon, zinc phosphide,malathion, and carbendazim.

Huong said her department and the RoK’s Animaland Plant Quarantine Agency (QIA) are jointly carrying out an examinationprogramme for dragon fruit and mango at Vietnamese factories before they areshipped to the RoK.

The QIA transferred the monitoring work to thePPD in 2015 and has only randomly examined the vapour heat treatment at local factories.Meanwhile, the RoK side has examined Vietnamese mango since 2014, and the PPDhas also proposed the QIA handover the pre-export monitoring of this fruit, sheadded.

To help Vietnamese farm produce meet importers’requirements, the PPD has been tightening the registration, production, sale,and use of plant protection products, she said, noting that it has also boostedcommunications to encourage farmers to use and businesses to trade inbiological plant protection products.

The RoK is a big agricultural product buyer ofVietnamese goods. Its imports of Vietnamese agricultural, forestry, and fisheryproducts rose from 700 million USD in 2015 to 1.8 billion USD last year,representing 3.4 percent of its purchases of farm produce from overseas,according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. –VNA