On July 23, the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association published the detailed export value of key fruit and vegetable products to markets in the first six months of 2024.
Accordingly, in the first half of the year, durian continued to maintain the leading position in terms of export value with 1.323 billion USD, up 44.4% over the same period last year.
Dragon Fruit ranked second with 292 million USD, down 14.3% over the same period last year.
Just a few years ago, dragon fruit used to bring the greatest export value to the fruit and vegetable industry. In 2018, the highest record that dragon fruit achieved was nearly 1.3 billion USD, but it gradually decreased and lost the export milestone of one billion USD in 2022.
Dragon fruit is on display at an export fair in Ho Chi Minh City.
In the first six months of the year, the Chinese market had a decrease in import value of 26%. However, it was still the largest dragon fruit import market with a value of 203 million USD, accounting for 68% of the market share.
The good news is that most of the import markets, except for China, have increased in value, such as: India 21 million USD, up 35%; the US 18 million USD, up 90%; South Korea 10 million USD, up 36%; and the UAE 7.8 million USD, up 60%. This shows that Vietnamese enterprises have had a good market diversion.
The reason for China’s sharp decrease in imports of Vietnamese dragon fruit is that this country already has a large domestic supply to replace imported goods.
Notably, lychee exports also decreased sharply due to crop failure. In the first half of 2024, Vietnam exported 23.6 million USD of lychees, down 46% over the same period in the last year. China, France, Malaysia, and the Netherlands are the four largest markets for Vietnamese lychees.