The Australian table grape industry appears unlikely to ship a single container into the Vietnamese market this year, despite the South East Asian nation giving a strong indication it is set to reopen its doors to Australian fresh produce imports.
Australian Table Grape Association (ATGA) president Jeff Scott told the ABC market access could be reinstated in May, following a positive round of negotiations between Australian Agriculture Department officials and their Vietnamese counterparts in Hanoi last week.
While this would do little to appease the table grape industry, with export programmes set to wind-up in April, Scott said it was critical that long-term trade relations between the two nations were strengthened following the conclusion of impasse, which came into effect on 1 January. “The end result should be an ongoing, strong relationship to ensure that this sort of situation doesn't arise again,” Scott told the ABC. “
Table grapes accounted for over 80 per cent of all fresh fruit exports to Vietnam in 2014, with the trade valued at over A$30m (US$23m). It’s therefore unsurprising that ATGA has led the charge to bring a swift resolution to the blockade, which stemmed from Vietnam’s re-evaluation of its protocols surrounding Mediterranean fruit fly.
“The Vietnamese believe that the documentation recently submitted should satisfy their concerns in terms of how we deal with Med fly,' Scott explained. 'The result of this should be that the Vietnamese Government, we're hoping, will recognise that there are no Med fly in the eastern states, and therefore we should be able to resume exporting from May onwards.”
