ƯuIn general, in the 28 coastal provinces and cities, the traceability of fishery products has been carried out in a synchronous and well-planned manner. According to Vietnam’s Directorate of Fisheries, the traceability of seafood caught in Vietnamese waters is controlled in a chain through a mechanism of certification to ensure consistency with the files on ships moving in and out of ports, the certification work at 53 designated fishing ports, the certificates issued by local fishery departments, the issuance of export certificates, and input control at processing plants.
In 2021, Vietnam granted 3,300 certificates for 43,998 tonnes of seafood exported to markets requiring fishing certificates, with exports to the EU accounting for 2,715 certificates and 31,881 tonnes. Since the start of 2022, about 1,500 certificates have been issued for over 21,000 tonnes.
Strictly implementing the instructions on fishery product traceability, the authorities of Ca Mau Province have stepped up control over the operations of fishing vessels, with data comparison conducted monthly between the concerned agencies.
From early 2020 to August 31, 2022, the IUU Office at fishing ports in Ca Mau inspected and controlled over 39,000 fishing trips, issued warnings to over 1,000 vessels, and asked the owners of such vessels to comply with regulations.
As a result, from early 2018 to September 2022, the Ca Mau authorities issued 417 certificates for 46,500 tonnes of fishery products. To date, the province has not recorded any errors in export dossiers that require verification and explanation.
In Phu Yen Province, no vessel has committed the violation of catching fish in foreign waters since 2019. Director of the Phu Yen Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Trong Tung shared that the province is digitalising the work of origin tracing for fishery products to replace manual declaration, which is time consuming and requires more manpower while data is inaccurate. Management officials, fishermen and enterprises in the fishery sector are also being trained to use electronic logging software. The software is being test run and will be applied to tuna fishing vessels in the coming time.
Phu Yen Chairman Tran Huu The emphasised that fighting IUU is an urgent task and the provincial government has instructed local authorities to step up communication so as to raise awareness among fishermen. The province also asked enterprises to resolutely refuse buying, processing or exporting fishery products with unknown origin.
However, according to an assessment by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the task of origin tracing for fishery products remains limited in many localities and absolute reliability is not guaranteed.
To continue keeping track of seafood origin effectively, it is necessary for the fishery sector and coastal localities to enhance the quality of the enforcement forces, enhance education for the fishing community and enterprise owners, and enhance the role of local fishing associations.
For now, in order to further enhance the effectiveness of supervising and tracing the entire chain of fishing, processing and exporting, it is a crucial and urgent task to build a common database that connects relevant agencies.
Underlining the importance of this matter, Director Tran Dinh Luan of the Directorate for Fisheries stated that fishery traceability is not only intended to meet the requirements of export markets such as the EU and the US but also to meet the requirements of the domestic market on transparent information about fishery products.
In recent time, the fishery sector has made proactive implementations regarding this matter, from fishing to processing to exporting. However, manual logging has exposed some drawbacks: it is inaccurate, time-consuming and requires significant manpower.
Therefore, implementing electronic logging is an urgent task for the fishery sector. After the testing period, the Directorate of Fisheries noted that electronic logging must be easy-to-use and capable of connecting with fishing vessels all over the country. Feedback from enterprises and vessel owners suggested that they all want to use the electronic tool to increase accuracy and reduce the manpower required for keeping track of the origin of their fishery products.
