Effect of the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) on the Export of Vietnam’s Rice to the European Union (EU)

In recent years, Vietnam’s international economic integration activities have become increasingly vibrant, not only serving the goal of trade growth but also aiming to recover the economy after the objective impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among Vietnam’s export products, rice is always the key export product, putting Vietnam in the top five largest rice-exporting countries in the world, and the EU market is always the most important and potential market. Therefore, the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) has brought great opportunities for Vietnamese rice exports with commitments on preferential tariffs and export quotas, thereby creating favorable conditions for Vietnamese rice to make a breakthrough. This study was conducted with the goal of assessing the impact of EVFTA on Vietnam’s rice exports. The article used the Existing Comparative Advantage (RCA) coefficient to evaluate the competitive advantage of Vietnam’s rice industry compared to the group of five other major rice-exporting countries in the EU, including Pakistan, Thailand, India, Cambodia, and Myanmar from 2017 to 2021. At the same time, the research also uses the Export Specialization Index (ES) to determine the change in the competitiveness of Vietnamese rice in the EU market. Research results show that both the RCA index and the ES index have positive signs, showing that commitments on tariff quotas in the EVFTA have helped Vietnamese rice gradually regain competitiveness and open up opportunities to specialize in exporting this commodity.