The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Vietnamese representative agency in Saudi Arabia, SFDA have initially allowed some Vietnamese enterprises to export wild caught fish after two years of discussions. To achieve this achievement, Vietnamese businesses have also worked with the authorities to overcome the shortcomings, complete the self-assessment profile to send to Saudi Arabia. This is a good signal for Vietnamese seafood exporters to open a new direction for the domestic seafood industry, especially in the context of seafood exports to many markets facing difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic. cause. In addition, Vietnamese seafood exporters need to know that Saudi Arabia is a difficult market with high requirements for hygiene and safety.

There are more than 120 Vietnamese enterprises operating in the fields of trading fresh food, processing, agriculture - forestry - fisheries, and electronics want to learn and cooperate with the Middle East - Africa market area. Vietnam always attaches great importance to the improvement and consolidation of traditional friendly relations with Middle East - African countries. So far, Vietnam has established trade relations with all 70 countries in the Middle East - Africa.

With a geographical advantage of over 36 million square kilometers, population of over 1.6 billion people, accounting for about 7% of global GDP, and demand for importing many key export products of Vietnam is very high. In the last three years, the total two-way trade turnover has continuously increased, from 16.25 billion USD (2016) to 18.65 billion USD (2017), reaching approximately 20 billion USD in 2019, of which, Vietnam has a trade surplus. 5 billion USD and up to six partners whose bilateral trade turnover is consistently over 1 billion USD (UAE, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, South Africa, Ivory Coast). The Middle East - Africa market block is a really diversified market for Vietnamese businesses.

Vietnam's exports to the Middle East - Africa are increasingly diversified. In addition to agricultural products, textiles, footwear ... there are also many industrial goods with high added value such as computers, electronic products and components, mobile phones, machinery, and equipment. In addition, the business environment of the Middle East - Africa has been increasingly improved thanks to the trend of peace and strengthening regional linkages, so there is an opportunity to expand trade cooperation between Vietnam. South and this area is huge.

Goods distribution channels such as supermarket chains and retail chains are spread across countries in the region, so if Vietnamese goods can enter a Middle East - Africa country, they will also have opportunities to enter regional countries.

Besides, there are also drawbacks

Due to the Covid 19 translation, the price of oil (the main source of income) in these countries decreased and their foreign currencies decreased, causing some countries to have policies to reduce imports. In particular, Algeria has banned the import of some fruits such as oranges, tangerines ... when the country is in the harvest season.

In addition, in the Middle East - Africa, Vietnamese products will also have to compete fiercely with goods of many other countries such as rice, cereals (India), tea, coffee, spices (China, India). , United Arab Emirates) and agricultural products. (Thailand, Kuwait, India) ...

The cost of transporting containerized ice from China to Southeast Asia is surging due to a shortage of containers as a result of uneven distribution to meet greater demand in many markets around the world.

Vietnam, the Middle East and Africa are geographically distant, so the transport of import and export goods in the context of Covid-19 is becoming more difficult, the cost is also more expensive and encounters many barriers.

Although there are still many difficulties, the potential for cooperation between Vietnam and the Middle East and Africa is huge

In order for Vietnamese goods to successfully penetrate the Middle East - Africa market, Vietnamese Trade Counselors in this region said that businesses need to improve product quality. At the same time, products when exported to this market not only "hit" on domestic consumers but also target foreigners living here like Indians and other Asian countries.

Enterprises also need to apply production technology to have high added value products, reduce costs in order to increase competitiveness with products of other countries.

In addition, businesses also need to actively exploit markets registered with the Trade Promotion Agency, the Asia-Africa Market Department and Vietnamese Foreign Trade Services to participate in trade promotion in the market block. this.

The Department of Trade Promotion and the Department of Trade are committed to supporting businesses to connect, learn and verify information about partners, markets ... to create favorable conditions for businesses to promote export to the Middle East. - Africa./.