Ca Mau (VNS/VNA) - The southernmost province of CaMau is supporting seafood enterprises to make good use of the UK-Vietnam FreeTrade Agreement (UKVFTA) to foster exports to the UK in the near future, theprovincial Department of Industry and Trade said.

The province was focusing on helping local firms participate in trade promotionactivities to find customers, and expand and develop their markets in the UK,it said, adding that sufficient attention was being paid to disseminatinginformation about the agreement and the UK market to local enterprises.

At the same time, the province was supporting businesses in training tomaintain basic knowledge and information on international integration, importand export, tax, customs, and trade promotion skills while enabling enterprisesto access preferential loans to improve production and processing efficiencyfor export.

Top priority was also being given to providing the firms with the technicalbarriers in trade to limit risks and assisting them to apply advanced qualitymanagement systems to meet international standards, technical regulations andregulations in export activities, including those from the UK market.

Besides the support by local authorities, export enterprises should continue toimprove their competitiveness, expand production scale, invest in technology,improve the quality of their products and diversify product designs whileensuring food safety and complying with technical standards for exportedproducts, according to the department.

Seafood export is a key industry of the province, accounting for 92% of itstotal export turnover, according to the department's deputy director Duong VuNam.

Typically, the locality is regarded as the country's shrimp capital whereshrimp farming takes up approximately 280,000ha of the total existingaquaculture area of over 300,000ha. Currently, Ca Mau's shrimp has been shippedto more than 90 countries and territories around the world.

The country's participation in many free trade agreements, such as the UKVFTA,has provided tax incentives for the province's exporters, especially seafoodexporters.

Under the UKVFTA commitments, 50% of tariffs on seafood imported from Vietnam hasbeen eliminated while the remaining 50% of tariffs will be removed after two,four or six years.

Thanks to the tax incentives, the province's seafood exports to the UK saw apositive increase of 53.3% in 2021. In the first seven months of 2022, itsseafood shipments to the market surged significantly by 70% year-on-year.

The latest report from the department revealed that the province exported 848million USD worth of seafood to overseas markets in the seven-month period,surging 42% over the same time last year or accounting for 73% of the yearlytarget.

Besides to the UK, its seafood exports to the EU also witnessed a yearly hikeof 45% to 135 million USD.

With this good performance, the seafood export of the province is well on trackto surpass 1.1 billion USD by the end of this year./.