Nguyen Ngoc Son, vice chairman of Cam Ranh City People’s Committee, said that prices of painted spiny lobsters are now at just VND580,000 per kilo (USD25,217), down 60%-70% on-year. First-grade ornate rock lobster is presently sold at just VND1.1 million, down half against the same time of last year.
Lobster prices in the southern central province of Khanh Hoa have sharply declined
According to Nguyen Thi Chau Pha, chairwoman of farmers association in Cam Linh Ward, lobster breeders are struggling with the drastic price fall, while feed prices are on the rise. Many of the households are suffering losses, ranging from VND20 million to billions of VND.
Nguyen Chi Lem’s family has to spend up to VND5-6 million on feed for 50 cages of lobster per day. Now, he accepts the lobster sale at low prices to cut down the loss which is around VND1 billion.
Son said that lobsters are mostly exported to China via border trade, but recently, goods have to be exported into China officially, not through border trade. This requires the products to have their certificates of origin.
Vo Khac En, deputy head of Khanh Hoa Province’s Fisheries Department, said the agency warned local farmers of China’s tighter border trade policy, urging them to register their product origin certificates. However, many ignored this.
The government’s newly-issued Decree 26 also stipulates the registration of fishery breeding lists which need to be approved by local authorities.
Khanh Hoa is the country’s lobster breeding hub with a total 49,000 cages.
Earlier, the central province of Quang Nam also faced a stockpile of purple back squid which failed to be exported to China due to a lack of origin certificates.