Mekong Delta province Ben Tre set to export fresh coconuts to China

Vietnam and China have reached agreement on conditions for exporting fresh coconuts from the former to the latter; and it was marked by a ceremony in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre on Friday.

The agreement was reached after extensive negotiations between the plant quarantine agencies of both countries, officials said.

Friday’s ceremony announcing the export agreement was organized jointly by Mini Digital Vietnam Investment and Trade JSC (Ben Tre Branch) and Ben Tre’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Department director Doan Van Danh said Vietnam had submitted a dossier in 2023 on opening the Chinese market for fresh coconuts.

Ben Tre province, Vietnam’s top coconut producer, has 133 approved growing areas and 14 packaging facilities that have received export codes for the Chinese market.

Huynh Tan Dat, director of the Plant Protection Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, noted that Vietnam was the sixth-largest coconut producer in the world with an annual output of approximately 1.9 million tons. Ben Tre contributes significantly to this, with around 688 million coconuts in 2022.

Opening the Chinese market to fresh Vietnamese coconuts presented a golden opportunity, Dat said. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion and domestic production covering only about 10% of demand, China was a substantial market for coconut products, he added.

If leveraged effectively, coconut exports to China could generate an additional $200-300 million in 2024, contributing to Vietnam's overall coconut export revenues reaching the $1 billion mark in the near future.

Ben Tre, the province with the largest coconut cultivation area in the country of over 80,010 hectares, has seen continuous growth in this crop in recent years.

More than 70% of the local population relies on coconuts and the fruit’s cultivation is vital to the province’s economic and social life. The province has more than 163,000 coconut-cultivating households.