PM: VN must strive to be among world's top 15 agricultural countries in next decade

The Government chief stressed the point at a meeting to review this year's performance of agriculture sector held by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Thursday.

The sector gained outstanding and comprehensive achievements with impressive breakthroughs, but more importantly farmers' living standards have improved, he said.

Specifically, Viet Nam was the second biggest farm produce exporter in Southeast Asia as the export values grew seven-year high of 3.76% to over US$40 billion.

Vietnamese agricultural products are now available in more than 180 countries and territories, in whichChina, the United States, Japan, ASEAN and the Republic of Korea were the five biggest importers of Vietnamese farm produce in 2018, according to the General Statistics Office.

It is noticeable that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has cut 173 out of 345 business conditions or half of the Government's goal and as many as 18 factories with agricultural products deep processing technologies have came into operation, said Phuc.

Up to 2,200 new agricultural firms were established, an increase of 12% against 2017, sending the total number to 9,200 enterprises operating in this field, Phuc highlighted.

Despite the aforesaid achievements, Phuc pointed out several weaknesses, including high laborforce rate in agriculture around 38%) and huge post-crop losses.

In addition, agriculture restructuring has not been well implemented across localities and disbursement of public investment in this field remains slow.

Phuc challenged the sector envisage every measures to raise agricultural export values by 3% to US$42-43 billion.

Regarding this, he urged the ministry to abolish outdated regulations while accelerating application of latest technologies in a bid to lend wings to the advancement of the sector.

(Source: VGP)