Sales of Vietnamese farm produce sluggish as Chinese produce floods market Vietnamese consumers want to purchase local farm produce, but they can only find Chinese products, and farmers cannot sell their products because merchants are selling primarily Chinese products.   Thousands of tons of watermelon in Quang Nam Province have been thrown away as they could not be sold. Dozens of watermelon-laden trucks were stuck at the Tan Thanh border gate because the fruit could not be sold to Chinese businesses. Local newspapers reported that the onion price in Da Lat and Soc Trang has dropped dramatically because of oversupply. More than 50,000 tons of unsold onions are piled up in Soc Trang province, where the onion price has dropped from VND20,000 per kilo to VND5,000. Meanwhile, Vietnamese housewives complain they cannot buy local onions at the markets as there are only Chinese products. A report of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) showed that the export turnover of key export items such as rice, coffee and rubber in the first three months of the year dropped sharply by 30 percent. The public has spearheaded the criticism of MOIT, which is seen as responsible for the farm produce’s lack of sales. A member of a parents’ forum wrote that MOIT should help farmers boost sales in domestic and world markets instead of “standing by idly” and watching farmers bargain farm produce away. “MOIT announced some days ago that 80 percent of watermelon has been sold. But the real situation is much more pessimistic,” he wrote. In fact, MOIT has done what it can to help farmers sell watermelon. The ministry’s trade union collected tons of watermelon stuck at Tan Thanh border gate, transported them to Hanoi and sold them at the ministry’s head office at VND7,000 per kilo. A vice director of the ministry’s department, on his Facebook page, called on people to buy watermelon to help farmers settle difficulties. However, this is not a long-term solution to Vietnam’s farm produce distribution problem. “By selling watermelon on Facebook and at the head office, MOIT can only help save tens of tons of watermelon at maximum,” an economist noted. “What it should do is apply drastic measures to regulate the domestic market,” he said. Vu Vinh Phu, former deputy director of the Hanoi Trade Department, and now chair of the Hanoi Supermarket Association, said there are big problems in the distribution system. In Long An province, dragonfruit is sold at VND5,000 per kilo only, while Hanoians have to pay VND35,000 per kilo. Deputy Minister of MOIT Tran Tuan Anh, in reply to the criticism, said that MOIT alone cannot settle the problem, and that this issue relates to the reorganization of agricultural production. Kim Chi, VNN