Over the past decade, Viet Nam has demonstrated that its agriculture is competitive internationally in that it has been able to grow its share of the world market in a number of important agricultural commodities. However, recent falls in the world prices of the majority of Viet Nam’s key agricultural exports have highlighted problems inherent in the nation’s new, market-based agricultural sector. In particular, the areas planted with perennial export crops tend to be of low productive potential in terms of both quality and quantity; there has been insufficient development of the structures of national marketing systems; and many farm households lack the capacity to cope with the highly unstable net incomes that they derive from the production of perennial export crops. As a consequence of these deficiencies, Viet Nam’s major agricultural exports tend to realize unit values that are below those achieved by other countries.

This paper examines these problems, discusses means of addressing them, and proposes possible policies and measures. These potential policies and measures will be studied in more detail in follow-up Unassisted research, and the conclusions will be the subject of a future UN discussion paper.