HANOI: Eighty percent of Vietnam’s population lives in rural areas and the country is largely agriculturally based, even so the country is still spending several billion dollars every year importing agricultural products. Statistics show that the Vietnamese have been importing peanuts for several years, primarily from India, Senegal, and China.
According to numbers from the General Department of Vietnam Customs, Vietnam has imported 12,000 metric tons of peanuts over the last six months.
In 2015, Vietnam imported 35,000 metric tons, a 146 percent increase compared to 23,000 metric tons in 2014. Surprisingly, China has been Vietnam’s number-one source of peanut imports in the last three years, but peanuts are still being exported the other way round every harvest season.
The price of peanuts that Vietnam imports from China is unexpectedly cheap, only VND5,500 to VND6,000 a kg, relative to the rate of those shipped from other countries, which are around VND15,000 to VND22,000 (US$1) a kg. The price of peanuts imported from China into Vietnam is also much lower than that of peanuts exported from Vietnam to China.
According to peanut traders in the north-central and Central Highlands regions, the price of peanuts exported to China has always stayed above VND30,000 ($1.36) a kg in the last three years. Due to the industry’s high speed of growth, the Ministry of Industry and Trade predicted that peanut imports will rise in the future.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report that the area of peanut-growing land in Vietnam is only around 220,000 ha, with an output of 550,000 metric tons a year, merely meeting 75 percent of demand. The importation of peanuts will most likely be above 200,000 metric tons in the coming years.