With a large demand for food, the food production in Ho Chi Minh City only meets 15-20% of the demand. The rest must be imported from other provinces and cities or imported through official channels or unofficial channels that do not control the origin and safety of the food.
Since 2018, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has had a plan and approved the policy allowing the Department of Industry and Trade to preside over and coordinate with relevant departments, branches and units to research and develop a project for a pork trading floor.
By August 2023, the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City signed a cooperation agreement to build a pork trading floor with the Vietnam Commodity Exchange (Representative Office in Ho Chi Minh City, MXV), and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ho Chi Minh City.
To be listed on the stock exchange, pork must meet input standards, and producers must adjust their own standards to meet the needs of the stock exchange. When listed on the stock exchange, pork must be slaughtered industrially, not manually, and pigs will be automatically brought to industrial slaughterhouses in Ho Chi Minh City.
Mr. Nguyen Nguyen Phuong - Deputy Director of the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City said: "Through the trading floor model, farms and businesses will directly transact with buyers without going through intermediaries. Thereby, the city expects the selling price to the market to be cheaper, because the direct transaction process helps eliminate some arising costs".
At the same time, the city needs to establish an international arbitration team to best control the quality of pork after the transaction. This team is responsible for checking whether the quality of pork is commensurate with the selling price or not.
The pork trading floor is expected to be a "playground" to help farms and businesses connect with other international-scale floors.
Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoa - Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association assessed that the implementation of a pork trading floor will bring many benefits such as limiting the middle class, creating opportunities for state management agencies to regulate supply and demand, keeping up with the trend of applying information technology to electronic transactions when trading goods... However, to organize a pork trading floor, there needs to be synchronous coordination between relevant agencies.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee also assigned the Department of Industry and Trade to preside over and coordinate with relevant units to urgently advise the City People's Committee as well as speed up the construction of a pork trading floor.
The Department of Food Safety presides over and advises on the socialization of traceability work, encourages businesses and individuals to participate in the traceability system, and raises awareness and social responsibility in providing safe food.
