VIET NAM SHRIMP UPDATE AMID COVID RESURGENCE ON AUG 21, 2021

Saturday, 21/08/2021, 15:13

VIET NAM SHRIMP UPDATE AMID COVID RESURGENCE ON AUG 21, 2021

I/ Viet Nam Covid update until Aug 20, 2021

Covid in Viet Nam is still rising worryingly, recent days total infected cases passed 10.000 per day. HCM city is still the worst and the surrounding provinces like Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Long An are increasing significantly.

* Total infected cases in Viet Nam so far: 323.215

* Total death cases so far: 7.540

* Total recovered cases: 132.815

* Total cases under treatment: 182.916

* Total infected cases in HCM so far: 167.717 => HCM locks down until Sep 15 and from Aug 23, HCM local government stricter lock down, no one can go out and military takes care of distributing of foods and other necessary goods.

* Infected cases in provinces of Mekong delta where shrimp farming and processing so far

Tien Giang: 5.986

Long An: 17.047

Ben Tre: 1.475

Can Tho: 3.293

Kien Giang: 743

Tra Vinh: 1.042

Soc Trang: 655

Hau Giang: 373

Ca Mau: 73

Bac Lieu: 88

All provinces have the infected cases increased through the week, and this is the lockdown situation in these provinces:

* The following provinces extended the lockdown until end of Aug: Tien Giang, Long An, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh

* Can Tho continues to lockdown till Aug 25

* Soc Trang and Hau Giang continue to lockdown till the end of Aug but they are applying the zones “green, red, yellow, orange” according to the level of Covid cases to tackle with the epidemic and maintain production and business activities

* Bac Lieu continues to lockdown until Aug 22, however; so far Bac Lieu hasn’t applied 3TC for factories yet

* Ca Mau has just finished the extended lockdown and now the province is applying social distancing, factories are no longer to apply 3TC but need to have the pandemic prevention solutions. The province also create the favorable conditions for harvesting, transporting, buying/selling shrimp and other materials for shrimp farming particularly and agricultural sector generally.

II/ Shrimp harvesting & operation of factories

Thanks to the in-time solutions of Government, MARD, Department of fishery, VASEP, local authorities…then the situation of shrimp sector is getting stabilized step by step, even the shrimp prices are still being at low levels but farmers are not panic and harvest massively anymore.

The local authorities created favorable conditions for harvesting and transporting shrimp raw materials, agents can move in their areas to buy shrimp of farmers and transport to processing factories.

Interprovincial movement is also made more favorably, so the shrimp factories can buy raw materials from other provinces and the agents can transport shrimp from their locations to other provinces where the processing plants locate. This favorable movement also help transporting farming materials like feeds, chemicals, post larva…to farmers quicker and help farmers to stock the next crop as soon as possible.

As VASEP forecast, probably there is a significant shortage of shrimp raw material in the fourth quarter of this year because farmers are worrying the pandemic and less stocking or stop stocking to see how the pandemic progress and how the shrimp prices move, especially the shortage of big sizes is very clear because even if farmers quickly stock right now then there are not enough time for shrimp grow up to big sizes (need 4 – 5 months for Vannamei to grow up to 20, 25, 30 pcs/kg).

With many factories have vaccinated for their workforce about 30 – 40%, Ca Mau & Bac Lieu provinces do not apply “3 on-site”, Soc Trang & Hau Giang are applying “green zone” to maintain production and businesses. Well, I think, the factories can gradually increase their number of workers and operation capacity in coming time so that the factories can improve collecting shrimp from farmers and also processing the pending orders and load for customers. Right now, most of buyers must accept for factories to delay the shipment of pending orders to next Sep, Oct, Nov…

Even the factories can gain their operation capacity in coming time but significant lacking of workers (not vaccinated yet or not return yet after the pandemic) will affect to processing of value added products. Normally, the processing of value added products is mostly done by handmade and need many skillful workers, so predictably that the prices of value added products will increase quite well in near future. With the terrible affection of Covid in Thailand and Indonesia, so the prediction is quite clear and obvious!

Let’s wait and see!

III/ Buying prices

* Black tiger: increasing 5000 vnd/kg (~ 0.22 usd/kg) for big sizes 20, 30 pcs/kg, the prices of small sizes are stable

20 pcs/kg ~ 230.000 vnd/kg, 40 pcs/kg ~ 170.000 vnd/kg, 60 pcs/kg ~ 135.000 vnd/kg

* Vannamei: the prices have slightly increased for big sizes from 20 – 50 pcs/kg, and the prices of small sizes are stable

40 pcs/kg ~ 116.000 vnd/kg, 80 pcs/kg ~ 82.000 vnd/kg, 100 pcs/kg ~ 70.000 vnd/kg