Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue has urged the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to take urgent action to help local farmers as salt prices have sharply dropped, while stockpiles remain high.
MARD has been asked to instruct the Vietnam Northern Food Corporation to buy salt from localities nationwide this year to help ease difficulties facing local farmers.
Salt prices sharply drop
The corporation must be responsible for the purchase and sales of the salt, while refunding the state investment capital after the salt is sold out. The firm needs to inform the government of any difficulties it meets with during the process implementation.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade has been assigned to co-operate with MARD to supervise the salt purchase.
In April, the HCM City People’s Committee approved a programme to buy 30,000 tonnes of salt produced by farmers in Can Gio District in the context of falling salt prices.
This year, thanks to favourable weather conditions, Vietnam’s salt output has been very high; however, prices dropped sharply to just VND300 and 400 per kilo, nearly half of last year’s rate. Meanwhile, salt inventories have continued to rise due to weak purchasing power.
In many localities, the number of enterprises which specialise in purchasing salt is very low, so local farmers have to seek ways to retail their salt by themselves or depend traders, accepting their price squeezing.
Farmers in Cat Khanh Commune, Binh Dinh Province, still had between 500 and 700 tonnes in stock and many salt producers in the locality have had to give up the job to find another way to earn a living.
By late May this year, farmers in Dong Hai District, Bac Lieu Province, had produced 107,146 tonnes of salt, but only 15% had been sold.
In this situation, Sa Huynh Quang Ngai Province's Duc Pho District, the most famous salt-making area in the central region, with 587 households producing salt has also faced many difficulties.
This is the first time in a 20-year period that salt producers in the Sa Huynh salt field have been driven into a lamentable situation. If this condition continues, the Sa Huỳnh salt brand name will be wiped out.
