Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - It’s critical for Vietnam to focus onpromoting intellectual property rights for areas associated with agriculturalproducts which would enable farm produce to go far in internationalmarkets.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was planning topropose the Government approval to build a decree on managing nationalbrands of agricultural products. This is pressing as the export of agriculturalproducts was seeing a significant drop in the context of increasinguncertainties in the global market.

Statistics showed that the agro-forestry-aquatic product exportvalue was estimated at 6.28 billion USD in the first two months of this year,dropping by 22.5% against the same period last year.

Director of the ministry’s Agro Processing and Market DevelopmentAuthority Nguyen Quoc Toan said that economic and political instabilitiescoupled with changes in production policies of many countries made many farmproduce of Vietnam lose advantages, such as coffee, rice, cashew, tra fishand timber and wooden products.

It’s time to attach greater attention to protecting brands andgeographical indications for farm products to go far in the internationalmarkets, he said, adding that protected brands and geographical indicationswould help increase value while creating confidence among consumers about theirorigin and quality.

Bac Giang was a good example of protecting the brands of agriculturalproducts in foreign markets.

The northern province was known for the largest “thiêu” lycheeproduction in Vietnam with a total area of more than 28,000 hectares and anannual output of about 200,000 tonnes. The specialty was thiều lychee from LucNgan district which provided 120,000 tonnes and brought a value of more than 3trillion VND each year.

Luc Ngan “thiêu” lychee is currently granted certificates ofindustrial property protection by the Ministry of Science and Technology inseven countries, including China, Laos, Cambodia, the Republic of Korea,Singapore, Australia and the US. This is also the first agricultural product ofVietnam granted a certificate of geographical indication in Japan, opening upsignificant opportunities for this product to reach out to internationalmarkets.

Bac Giang also developed trademarks for Yen The hill chicken whichwas protected in China, Laos and Singapore and Chu noodle protected in Japan,the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Laos. The province also built brands for YenDung fragrant rice and Van Village wine.

Nguyen Phuc Thuong, Deputy Director of the provincial Departmentof Science and Technology, said that trademark protection contributed toincreasing the value of agricultural products. Products with protectedtrademarks had guaranteed quality and origin, met the requirements of exportmarkets and gained the trust of consumers.

However, the protection of geographical indications in foreignmarkets remained complicated in terms of time, procedures and costs, he said.

For example, it took nearly three years to negotiate theprotection of geographical indication for Lục Ngạn thiều lychee in Japan.

Many other provinces and cities paid attention to the developmentof intellectual property for local products.

However, the use of geographical indications for thecommercialisation of products remained inefficient.

Stressing that products with protected geographical indicationswere mainly agricultural products, Mai Van Dung, from the Intellectual PropertyOffice of Vietnam, said there were challenges in the protection of geographicalindications.

While there was an increasing trend of protecting processedproducts, not many processed products of Vietnam were protected, he said. Inaddition, the production scale of protected products remained modest.

According to Tran Le Hong, Deputy Director of the IntellectualProperty Office of Vietnam, the number of geographical indications increasedstrongly recently but just a few products were successfully commercialised inthe domestic market and for exports.

To date, only 40 out of 94 products with protected geographicalindications were exported, of which, only 26 were printed on the packaging andlabels when exported while the rest of 14 were exported under other brands.

According to Thuong, greater effort must be taken to increasecommunication and provide training to improve the awareness of intellectualproperty and form a culture of intellectual property protection as well asencourage innovation.

Consultancies and guidance would also be given to localities,businesses and cooperatives in registering and establishing rights to productsof high economic value with a focus on building geographical indications forkey products.

Special attention should be paid to foreign market research forcommercially potential products to implement protection in export markets.

Trademark protection alone was not enough, he said, adding that itwas also critical to strengthen production linkage and develop value chains toensure traceability, origin and quality of products./.