The pork price remains high this month

The price remains high this month weeks before Tet, bringing profits of VND1-1.5 million per pig.  A year ago, there was an oversupply. The pork prices fell to a low of VND15,000 per kilogram. Hundreds of thousand of farming households incurred big losses and heaped up debts. Many of them were on the verge of bankruptcy and others gave up farming.

At that time, to rescue farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) called on consumers to buy pork. The head of the ministry even met business owners to persuade them to increase pork rations in meals for their workers.

MARD then also kicked off the restructuring of the farming industry, cut the number of sows to balance the supply and demand. It also called on enterprises to support farmers by selling feed and offering loans to breeders with no interest rate.

After one year, in April 2018, the pig farming sector escaped the problem. Supported by the pork price increase, farmers stopped incurring losses and began making a profit.

The pork price peaked in October 2018, reaching VND56,000, while the breeding cost was VND35,000 per kilogram. Nguyen Xuan Duong from MARD said that Vietnam was among the countries which had the highest price for pork.

In such a context, MARD Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong called an urgent meeting to discuss solutions to force the prices down to below VND50,000 per kilogram. He warned that if the prices cannot be controlled, farmers will lose the domestic market.

The price hike of pork caused a headache for management bodies also because as it posed a risk of increasing imported pork in the domestic market.

After the meeting, the market price slightly fell to VND45,000-52,000 per kilogram in November which has been stable since then. With the price, farmers can profit from their pork, which is now affordable to buyers.

Duong said other countries had to spend a long time to settle the oversupply and recover the pig farming sector. Thailand, for instance, spent five years, and China three years, to do this. It took Vietnam only one year to overcome the crisis.

Another achievement Vietnam gained in 2018 was the export of pork products. After two decades, the sector, valued at $10 billion, for the first time exported pork through official channels to Myanmar.

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Hoang Hai