In Vietnam, fish sauce production has been developing in parallel with fishing and saltmaking for about 500-600 years.

There are 783 fish sauce production facilities nationwide which have a business registration, and nearly 1,500 households are involved in fish sauce processing with total processing capacity of 250 million liters per annum.

Thirty-five fish sauce processing facilities export their products, mostly in the north and coastal areas of the central region, the eastern part of the southern region and the Mekong Delta, accounting for 4.5 percent of total seafood processing facilities eligible to export products.

Vietnam’s fish sauce is exported to over 20 markets, mostly the US, EU, Japan and South Korea. A large proportion is processed for domestic consumption by 748 facilities, accounting for 22.8 percent of total seafood processing units for domestic consumption.

In 2019, Vietnam formed 43 safe fish sauce production and consumption chains, which accounted for 28.1 percent of total chains of safe food-forestry-seafood product supply chains nationwide.

The total value of the fish production sector is VND6 trillion a year and the annual growth rate has been stable at 13.25 percent over the last 10 years.

Phap Luat newspaper reports that Vietnam’s traditional fish sauce with Mami brand from Link Nature Power has surpassed Thailand to become the bestseller on Amazon.

However, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Phung Duc Tien noted that fish sauce producers in Vietnam are mostly small and tiny enterprises which have been slow in renovating technology.

There are 60 large investment projects in the agriculture sector with total capital of VND43 trillion, but the investments in fish sauce production remain very modest, according to Tien.

After a lot of effort, the Vietnam Fish Sauce Association was officially established under a decision by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which aims to develop, build and modernize fish sauce production with ensured food safety.

According to Tien, fish sauce products are now in three categories of regional products in the OCOP (one commune one product) Program which aims to enhance the value of local specialties.

The association needs to focus on dealing with the ‘bottleneck’ in processing technology in order to diversify products, enhance brands, and meet the standards set by importing countries.

Tran Dang, former director of the Vietnam Food Administration, said fish sauce, with a long history, is an indispensable part of millions of Vietnamese families, and has great advantages to conquer the world market. 

T. An

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