Agricultural and forestry processing

Despite favorable conditions to attract investment for development, the agricultural, forestry and fishery processing sector has not yet been exploited to bring about efficiency commensurate with the province's potential and advantages...

Binh Thuan currently owns over 270,000 hectares of agricultural land and has concentrated raw material areas such as rubber trees (over 42,000 hectares, output of 50,000 tons), dragon fruit trees (over 27,000 hectares, output of 500,000 tons)... This is also a locality with a fairly large forestry land area of 346,278 hectares, with reserves of about 353 million m3 of wood (of which production forests are 172,735 hectares). In addition, Binh Thuan is also one of the three largest fishing grounds in the country with an average output of 197,000 tons/year and an aquaculture area of about 4,100 hectares... From the above potential and advantages, the locality is capable of meeting the raw material source for large-scale agricultural, forestry and seafood processing factories. However, in recent times, the situation of attracting investment projects in this field in the province, especially in industrial parks (IPs), has been quite modest.

The agricultural, forestry and fishery processing sector in Binh Thuan needs investment to develop new products and deeply processed products... (Illustration photo)

According to the Binh Thuan Industrial Park Management Board, up to now, the whole province has 19/88 projects in the industrial park participating in production and business in the field of agriculture - forestry - fishery with a total investment capital of 388.67 billion VND and 34.78 million USD. Currently, most of the projects have come into operation and created jobs for nearly 2,900 workers, mainly in agricultural product processing (11 enterprises), seafood processing (6 enterprises), wood processing (2 enterprises) ... In 2022 alone, enterprises in the field of agriculture - forestry - fishery in the industrial park in the province achieved revenue of 4,175.9 billion VND, contributing export turnover of 149.6 million USD and paying the budget of 25.7 billion VND. In which, the revenue proportion of the agriculture - forestry - fishery sector accounts for 42.89% of the total revenue of the entire industrial park.

Through research, it is known that out of 6 seafood processing enterprises, 4 enterprises are operating stably, 1 enterprise has switched to processing products from bird's nests and the remaining case has invested in construction for a long time but has not yet come into operation. Regarding agricultural product processing, many enterprises have registered to implement projects in industrial parks, but mainly only participate in preliminary processing and packaging for exporting fresh dragon fruit to the Chinese market. There are also enterprises specializing in processing dried dragon fruit but the product consumption is very low, or in the case of dragon fruit wine production, it has stopped operating because the product is not suitable for consumer tastes... Meanwhile, the source of raw materials for producing products from wood, cashew nuts or seafood processing almost all depend on imports, because the locality has not been exploited to meet processing requirements (such as unstable output and types...).

Therefore, at the Workshop on Promoting On-Site Investment Promotion in the Field of Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Processing, which was recently organized by the Management Board of Binh Thuan Industrial Parks, the shortcomings and limitations in the past time were frankly acknowledged. That is, although production and business activities have initially achieved certain results, the agricultural, forestry and fishery processing sector has not yet been exploited to bring about efficiency commensurate with the potential and advantages of the province. In fact, Binh Thuan is currently the "capital" of dragon fruit in the country, but the processing and export of dragon fruit is facing many difficulties. The main products are pre-processed products with low technology content and added value, while exports depend too much on the Chinese market, so the output is unstable...

Therefore, in the coming time, promoting investment attraction in industrial parks in this field in the locality needs to focus on deep processing and production according to the value chain of each type of product. Such as encouraging businesses to research and invest in developing new products, deep-processed products associated with joint ventures, associations, and cooperation to jointly invest and exploit potential and advantages to bring higher efficiency. At the same time, feasible solutions are also taken into account in an effort to gradually bring Binh Thuan's processed agricultural products into the global supply chain, thereby contributing to helping businesses develop sustainably and proactively integrate into the international economy.

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