Russian imports of seafood from Vietnam surging

According to provisional figures of Russian Federal Customs Service, in 2006 Russia imported at least 52,400 tonnes of finfish, shellfish, mollusks and other seafood from Vietnam at a total cost of more than 104.2 million USD.

Actually, Russian seafood imports from Vietnam were increasingly dominated by growing volumes of pangasius products. In particular, according to Globefish, while in the first ten months of 2005 Russia imported approximately 16,000 tonnes of Vietnamese pangasius, in the same period of 2006 the total volume of Vietnamese exports of pangasius products to Russia rose more than twice to 33,800 tonnes totally worth 66 million USD.

According to FCS, Russia purchases a wide range of pangasius products from Vietnam such as fillets, steaks, head-off tail-off and H&G imported under the following codes HSC 0304209500, 0303799800 and 0303791990.

Main article of the Russian seafood import from the Asian country was "frozen fish fillets, other" (HSC 0304 20 950) including in particular Pangasius hypophthalmus, etc. More specifically, in 2006 Russia purchased nearly 19.3 thousand tons of Vietnamese fillets under this code worth ca.42 million USD. Thus, the share of the products in the overall import of seafood amounted to 36.7% in volume terms and 39.5% in value. The growth rates were impressing: 6 times in volume and 6.7 times in value as compared to 2005 and 100 times in volume and 142 times in value as compared to 2004.

The second place in the Russia's seafood import from Vietnam in 2006 was taken by "frozen fillets of freshwater fish, other" (HSC 0304 20 199). Russia imported more than 13,000 tonnes of the products (a share of 25% from Russia's seafood import from Vietnam) worth nearly 29 million USD (27.8%). Dynamics of Russian imports of frozen freshwater fish fillets was similar to that of the leading import article ("frozen fillets, other"). More specifically, the growth rate as compared to 2005 and 2004 amounted to 16.3 and 690 times in volume and 18.3 and 741.6 times in value accordingly. In actual figures, the nation's import of Vietnamese freshwater fish rose from 19 tonnes (39,000 USD) in 2004 to 13,000 tonnes (29 million USD) in 2006. Presumably, Vietnamese pangasius was imported under the above HSC as well and a special study of statistics down to each particular shipment is needed to find out the volumes of pangasius coming into the country.

Frozen surimi (HSC 0304 90 050) won the third place in the structure of Russia's seafood imports from Vietnam in 2006 with the indices of 7200 tonnes and 12.8 million USD. The share of the product in the Russia's total seafood imports from Vietnam amounted to 13.7% in volume and 12.3% in value. The growth rate as compared to previous years was as follows: in value terms 5.8 million USD up on 2005 and 10.7 million USD up on 2004 and in volume terms 1100 tonnes up on 2005 and 3800 tonnes up on 2004.

The total share of all the above mentioned three leading product categories amounted to 75.7% in volume and 79.6% in value. Thus, the shares of the remaining product categories imported from Vietnam amounted to 24.3% in volume and 20.4% in value.

As for other import articles, along with the above mentioned three leading articles of Russia's seafood import from Vietnam, the positive dynamics was observed for all ten selected articles with the largest volume and value figures.

Some decreases were recorded for the following product categories: 1605 90 300 ready-to-eat or canned invertebrates and 0307 49 590 frozen squid Ommastrephes except for O.sagittatus. However, in actual figures supplies of the above products were not large at 50 tonnes for HSC 1605 90 300 and 40 tonnes for HSC 0307 49 590.

Table: Dynamics of Russian seafood imports from Vietnam in 2004-2006 for selected codes