Statistics on total seafood export in first 9 months showed differences in growth of major markets of Vietnam. EU maintain relatively high growth, whereas export to Japan was keeping sharp decrease and US market had modest or unstable rise. Russian market was particularly uncertain, affecting to overall seafood export from Vietnam.

EU is the biggest importer of Vietnamese seafood with over US$660 million, accounting 24.4% of total seafood export value of Vietnam. EU is also the biggest importer of pangasius and tuna from Vietnam, with US$348 million and US$39 million, respectively.

After recovering and rising in second and third quarters, export to US sharply dropped in September, a decrease of 23% compared to the same period last year. However, total export value in first 9 months increased by 8.8% at US$526 million, accounting for 19.4% of total export value. US still ranks first in term of shrimp import from Vietnam.

Since the end of 2006 up to now, Japan is keeping the negative growth. In first 9 months of 2007, Japan imported US$525 million of seafood from Vietnam, 12.2% lower than the same period last year, accounting for 19.4%  of the total.

Following the 3 major markets, South Korea is the single market with stable growth. Seafood import from Vietnam reached US$180 million, up 27.3% over the same period of 2006, accounting for 6.7% of  the total.

Several years ago, Russia emerged as a promising land for Vietnamese seafood with the growth of hundreds percent at times thank to booming of pangasius (tra) fillet import. However, so far this year, this market import rate has slowed and significantly declined since May 2007, partly due to sudden changes in seafood import policies of Russian Government such as imposing ban or restriction on numbers of enterprises permitted to export to this market etc...

Exports to other markets have progress, creating better balanced structure of seafood outputs. the markets like Hong Kong, Asean, Australia and Taiwan, etc... project to further develop, contributing to boost seafood export of Vietnam to the target of US$3.6 billion in 2007.