Thuy Dung
At the seminar “Raising the competitive capability for Vietnam’s farm produce and seafood: information transparency-the way for development” in Hanoi on Wednesday, Danish Ambassador to Vietnam John Nielsen said making information transparent via electronic traceability is one of the effective ways to export Vietnamese farm produce to choosy markets like the U.S., the EU and Japan.
The Traceverified program is part of a development assistance program of the Danish government aimed at increasing the capability for the Vietnamese private economic sector with a total cost of VND216 billion.
However, despite its deployment since October, 2012 with free supports for participants until 2014, the program has only attracted 14 enterprises so far, mainly big seafood companies.
Nguyen Huu Dung, vice chairman of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers, ascribed the unexpected situation to the fact that local firms are afraid of publicizing information and they only join the program when demanded by partners.
To make the farm produce market transparent and to enhance food hygiene and safety management, John Nielsen suggested that the State should apply regulations and sanctions to force entities, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, to join the advanced system.
Ly Hoang Hai, deputy director of the scheme, meanwhile, said the project aims to build up and provide seafood and agricultural product supply chain with information on electronic traceability, laboratory management services and how to upgrade training activities for technicians.
Traceability helps related sides get right information on products at all processes in production and consumption chains. It also helps establish if suppliers make great efforts in making high-quality products or if these products’ quality is controlled strictly in the whole supply chain. But in fact, a majority of local companies have still carried out the manual method, with information recorded by hand and kept as hardcopies.
“This method is non-transparent and risky since only entities can read and understand the code for tracking the origin of products while consumers don’t really know about the products they buy. Furthermore, as information of many kinds of products must be kept within six months to two years, companies will need a lot of space to store the information, which is very risky,” Hai noted.
In the meantime, with the electronic traceability system, information will be stored in the computer system as the sole code for original track for every shipment in line with international standards. On top of that, information of the system could be accessed anytime and anywhere swiftly.
Đăng ký: VietNam News
