After the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) took effect from August 2020, Vietnam's rice exports to the EU have achieved quite impressive growth.

According to data from the General Department of Customs, Vietnam exported a record of nearly 104,000 tons of rice to the EU market in 2023 with a value of USD 71.7 million, an increase of 10% in both volume and turnover compared to 2022.

Thus, this is the second consecutive year that rice exports to the EU have exceeded the quota of 80,000 tons/year that the EU committed to Vietnam under the EVFTA Agreement.

This result shows that businesses are taking advantage of opportunities from the EVFTA Agreement quite well. At the same time, the quality of Vietnam's rice is also increasingly improving and meeting strict requirements from demanding markets.

At the Conference to disseminate regulations and commitments on SPS in the Free Trade Agreement between Vietnam and the European Union held in November last year, Mr. Ngo Xuan Nam, Deputy Director of Vietnam SPS Office, said that in recent years, no Vietnamese rice shipments exported to the EU market have been warned.

“Thus, the quality of our rice fully meets the requirements of this demanding market. In particular, the EU market is one of the markets that requires a lot of very high standards but we can still meet them," Mr. Nam said.

In 2023, Vietnamese rice was exported to 26/27 member countries in the European Union. Leading the way is Germany with a volume of 23,328 tons, an increase of 49.3% over the previous year and accounting for 22.4% of the market share; followed by Poland with 14,726 tons, an increase of up to 92% and accounting for 14.2% market share.

In particular, the volume of rice exported to many markets increased by 3-4 numbers such as: Hungary increased by 12 times, Bulgaria increased by 730%, Greece increased by 483.3%, Portugal increased by 425%... Among the main markets, only Italy recorded a decrease of 78.5% to 6,876 tons.

Recently, ST24 and ST25 rice - rice varieties that twice won the title of best rice in the world - have officially enjoyed preferential tariffs when exported to the European Union market. This is considered an opportunity to increase rice export turnover into this potential market.

Kylie Nguyen