Vietnam is now the seventh biggest tea producer and the fifth biggest exporter of the product in the world.

The Department of Farm Produce Processing and Market Development under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development reported that over 500 tea factories are operational in the country.

Together the factories produce more than 500,000 tonnes of dried tea leaves annually.

Vietnam shipped 34,000 tonnes of tea overseas for 54 million USD during January – April, a decrease of 10.2 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively, from the same period of 2017.

The biggest buyers of Vietnamese tea were Pakistan, Russia, Taiwan (China), Indonesia, the US, China and Malaysia.

Recently, some kinds of Vietnamese tea won awards at the first International Gourmet Tea Competition “Teas of the World” in Paris, including Rizote tea of the northern province of Thai Nguyen, a locality famous for green tea, won the silver award.-VNA