Vietnamese market 'flooded' with Chinese fruits, spending over 400 million USD in 6 months to import and sell

Chinese lychees are "causing a storm" in Vietnamese markets, and Mong Tu plums are "selling like hotcakes" even though the prices of these fruits are extremely expensive and Vietnam is also harvesting them with an output of hundreds of thousands of tons.

However, in addition to lychees and plums, many other fruits of Chinese origin are also sold in abundance in Vietnamese markets.

Ms. Chu Thi Hai - a wholesaler and retailer of fruits in Cau Giay ( Hanoi ), said that Chinese fruits are often imported and sold at Vietnamese markets seasonally. At this time, in addition to domestic fruits, she often sells Chinese crow's beak peaches, green plums, Wenzhou oranges, milk pears, apples, red grapes, milk grapes, and yellow melons.

In the first half of this year, Vietnam spent 402 million USD importing Chinese fruits and vegetables. Photo: NVCC

“This year, the price of Chinese fruits is relatively high,” Ms. Hai commented. Green plums (also known as Seo plums) cost 25,000 VND/kg, Wenzhou oranges cost 30,000 VND/kg, seeded red grapes cost 50,000 VND/kg, crow’s beak peaches cost 45,000 VND/kg, VIP milk pears cost 30,000 VND/kg, red apples cost 50,000 VND/kg, and yellow melons cost 30,000 VND/kg.

According to her, this is the retail price at the store. The wholesale price of Chinese fruits sold to wholesalers is usually only half of the retail price.

“Although compared to the current price level of Vietnamese fruits, Chinese fruits are more expensive, but they are still quite popular. That is because most of these fruits cannot be grown in Vietnam, or the output is quite modest,” Ms. Hai shared.

In the high-end segment, Ms. Dinh Thi Hoa, owner of a fruit shop in Dinh Cong (Hanoi), said that in the past half month, her shop has imported a lot of Beijing peaches, milk grapes, areca plums and jujubes. These fruits have prices ranging from 130,000-350,000 VND/kg.

Many types of fruit are imported and sold at quite expensive prices. Photo: NVCC

“This price is as expensive as the price of imported fruits from the US, Australia...”, she said. However, some Chinese fruits still sell very well. For example, the price of plums is sky-high, the most expensive among Chinese fruits sold in the Vietnamese market, but she still consumes about 50-70kg every day.

Similarly, the price of early season milk grapes was up to 340,000 VND/2kg box, but in just 3 days, she sold out a batch of 250 boxes. As for jujubes, the price was 250,000 VND/1.5kg box, with customers ordering several boxes at a time, so the amount of goods sold each day was also calculated in the hundreds of kilograms.

According to Ms. Hoa, the price of Chinese fruits is quite expensive at the beginning of the season. During the main harvest season, more goods will flow into our country, and the price will drop sharply. Like last year, there was a time when the price of Chinese milk grapes dropped to 30,000-50,000 VND/kg, and jujubes also dropped to 60,000-80,000 VND/kg.

Statistics from the Customs Department show that in the first 6 months of this year, the turnover Importing Chinese fruits and vegetables reached 402 million USD, a slight increase compared to the figure of 397 million USD in the same period in 2024.

Accordingly, Chinese fruits and vegetables accounted for 33.5% of Vietnam's fruit and vegetable import turnover in the past 6 months. China was also the largest fruit and vegetable supplier in the domestic market in the first half of this year.

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