Pepper price still low in next few years

At present, though pepper price is standing at VND60,000 per kilogram, it is still lower than that in 2015 when pepper was sold at VND200,000 a kilogram.

At the pepper industry’s annual meeting on May 11 held by the Vietnam Pepper Association (VPA), Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran  Thanh Nam stressed that because of oversupply, pepper price has gone down in the world, adding that the only way to raise pepper price is to improve its quality.

VPA and the government will re-structure the industry by shrinking the farming land areas and quantity as well as raising quality and diversify pepper products for export.

In 2017,  export turnover of pepper fell by 21 percent compared to 2016. In the first four months of 2018, export revenue continued to go down by 33 percent, earning $311 million despite export volume increased by 15.5 percent with 88,000  tons.

Experts predicted pepper price would decline in the next few years; accordingly, pepper farming land areas will shrink in unsuitable wether provinces (farming land square of pepper is now 152,000 hectare).

According to VPA, though there was a year-on-year decrease of 30-40 percent in pepper productivity, bad weather and low price this year its quality was improved because farmers have no longer abused chemical fertilizer and pesticide.