With the mandate to promote trade and investment between Vietnam and Singapore, Vietnam Trade Office in Singapore (VTO) is pleased to support local businesses to connect with Vietnamese farmers and exporters. Over the last four decades, the VTO office in Singapore has collaborated closely with Singaporean fruits and vegetables importers association (SFVIEA) to promote the trading in fruits and vegetables between Vietnam and Singapore.
In 2020, just before the travel curbing, we co-organized with SFVIEA a business mission to Vietnam to explore new sourcing for fruits and vegetables, as an effort to circumvent potential supply disruption. Throughout the year 2020, the VTO have organized various Webinar business matching events to help Singapore-Vietnam businesses to interact and overcome the geographical obstacles due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks to these efforts, Singapore import of fruits and vegetables from Vietnam have registered a growth of 27% and 43% respectively. Import for both fruits and vegetables were valued at 51 million SGD as compared to 37.3 million SGD over the same period in 2019. The quality, value for money, freshness and taste of Vietnam’s produce has made us an important supplier for Singapore market. Being Singapore’s 10th biggest trading partner worldwide, Vietnam will always continue to be a trustworthy business partner, participating actively in ensuring Singapore food security and food safety.
Every year Vietnam exported around 4 billion dollars for edible vegetables, tubers, fruits and nuts. We are looking to diversify from China, Korea, Japan, and Thailand to non-traditional markets such as Singapore. We are pleased to see the continued growth in number and variety of Vietnamese fruits and vegetables introduced into the Singapore market in the past few years. Already we can find various fruits such as chiku, pomelo, letchi, guava, passion fruits, mango,… but while our efforts have borne some fruit, there are still more opportunities out there waiting to be picked. Vietnam grows a great variety of other fruits such as watermelons, musk, durian, longan, orange, banana, pineapple, star fruits as well as vegetables like avocado, artichoke, mushroom, tomatoes, cucumbers, flower cabbage, eggplants, green beans and pumpkins, among others. Vietnam producers have researched and invested a lot in agricultural technology to improve the quality of our fruits and vegetables. We are now also producing more fruits and vegetables that are certified organic to meet with higher expectation from Singapore consumers.
In 2021, The VTO will continue to deepen its partnership with SFVIEA to bring more quality fruit and vegetables from Vietnam to Singapore via activities such as: business mission, Webinar, B2B, hybrid expo… By this way, we can jointly promote the diversity of the fruits and vegetables for Singaporean consumers and helping our two countries to ensure the industry’s resilience.
Mrs. Quynh TRAN, Ph.D. (Commercial Counsellor – Embassy of the S. R. of Viet Nam in Singapore)
