Developing Tea Market through Analyzing the Value Chain of Vietnam Tea Industry

Abstract

Nowadays, the international trade in agricultural products is very well-organized, largely controlled by multinational supermarket chains. Because of increased consumer knowledge, the supermarket's demand for quality of agricultural products, which are based on the consumer needs in developed countries, is more and more high-required and becoming a technical barrier of many developing countries considering agricultural exports as a lever for economic development. Tea is identified as a major export product of Vietnam by the government. Tea production is an economic sector in the production development for rural agricultural area in the mountainous midland where tea is as a strategic product for export, helps to earn foreign currency for the country, and create employment for huge workforce. Moreover, the tea industry which is also one of the potential industries would increase a quantity (low tea yields), a quality (due to low quality of tea) and a selling price when the tea quality increases, the type of tea is increasing, then the price increases. Because tea plays the important role as one of Vietnam's important export agricultural products, it is definitely necessary for research investment to develop policies and solutions for developing the value chain of tea and increasing the added value of tea, particularly in intense competition of the world tea market where the demand for this product is decreasing due to the global economic crisis, and the number of suppliers participating in the tea market is increasing and becoming more and more professional. This article confirms that the development of tea export market of Vietnam is a right direction. The article shows that enhancing the value chain of tea industry is one of the factors promoting the development of the Vietnam tea market during the period of international integration. The paper, thence, proposes some solutions to develop the tea market Vietnam in the future.