Closing regional links and increasing agricultural values

At the event titled "Promoting Regional Links: Accelerating Economic Development", organised by the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance and the VnBusiness Magazine on October 26, speakers discussed the limits and opportunities of agricultural production in building the material regions and links between households, cooperatives, and enterprises.

Nguyen Van Thinh, vice chairman of the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance, said that the role of the parties involved in cooperation and association in the value chain of agricultural products is still limited.

Thinh showed that many cooperatives have yet to complete their role of bridging farmers and businesses.

“Farmers and businesses are not linked well enough to each other, and products must go through many intermediate parties. This leaves farmers with meagre benefits,” Thinh said.

Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong, purchasing director of the BigC/GO supermarket system operated by Central Retail said that it wants to foster the links with cooperatives to ensure stable supply sources. "However, in reality, this is difficult because of the insubstantial supply sources," Phuong said.

Meanwhile, the cooperative network is being expanded. The current cooperatives attracted 3.28 million households, accounting for about 38 per cent of the total number of households across the country.

Approximately 1,600 safe agricultural product supply chains were organised with the participation of more than 300 companies and 150 cooperatives.

“The above situations raised the importance of building regional links. Besides this, as the socioeconomic situation in the country and the world is still volatile, the issue of regional links becomes even more urgent,” Thinh said.

To promote agricultural product consumption, the Agrotrade Vietnam under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, proposed to build key five material regions with a total area of 166,800 hectares.

The first region is the northern mountainous fruit tree region with an area of 14,000ha covering the northern provinces of Son La and Hoa Binh.

The second one is the region of timber material planted with sustainable certification, which covers an area of 22,900ha in the central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua-Thien Hue.

It is necessary to build the Central Highlands coffee region with an area of 19,700ha at Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Dak Lak, and Dak Nong provinces.

The fourth region will focus on planting rice, which covers an area of 50,000ha in the Mekong Delta provinces of An Giang and Kien Giang. The fifth one is named the Dong Thap Muoi fruit tree area covering 60,200ha at Dong Thap, Long An, and Tien Giang provinces.

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