Vietnamese tea exporting and forecasting to 2030

 of 
2013-2016, during the preceding period from 
2005 to 2012 it increased by 120.2 thousand tons, 
and increased by 77.92 thousand tons during the 
period from 2017 to 2018. Similarly, the value 
of the exported tea increased more significantly 
than the quantity of the exported tea. To be more 
precise, as shown in Table 4, the value grew by 
24.1 million dollars in the period of 1990 to 
1997, rose by 68.6 million dollars in the next 
period from 1998-2004, and by 161.5 million 
dollars in the period of 2005 to 2012. Overall, 
the value of the exported tea increased on 
average by 105.51 million dollars during the 
period from 1990 till 2018. 
Figure 2 indicates the relationship between 
the regressor, namely the tea export quantity, and 
the explanatory variables. It can be seen that 
except for the export price, all the remaining 
regressands are more likely to explain the tea 
export quantity. This is not unexpected because 
the tea export price depended on the global 
market price while tea production was still based 
on the national production capacity. 
Determinants of Vietnamese tea export quantity 
The descriptive collected data are displayed 
in Table 5. We can easily observe the large 
standard deviations of each variable in the table 
that explicitly signify changes in the tea export 
quantity and total production quantity. On 
average, Vietnam has exported 40.91 tons of tea 
to the world market with a price of USD 1,230 
per ton. The tea export price was less likely to 
change throughout the 58 years, which can be 
seen by the relatively small standard deviation at 
USD 0.27 per kg. As can be seen in Figure 3, the 
tea production quantity had a large expansion 
from 2000 up to 2018, followed by tea 
productivity that implicitly indicates the latent 
effectiveness of Vietnamese government policies 
in terms of stimulating the development of the tea 
(a) Export quantity vs. productivity from 
1961 to 2018 
 (b) Export quantity vs. export price from 
1961 to 2018 
Figure 1. Time trend of Vietnam’s export quantity and other criteria from 1961 to 2018 
Vietnamese tea exporting and forecasting to 2030 
642 Vietnam Journal of Agricultural Sciences 
 1960 1980 2000 2020 
Year 
(c) Export quantity vs. productivity from 
1961 to 2018 
 1960 1980 2000 2020 
Year 
 (d) Export quantity vs. export price from 
 1961 to 2018 
Figure 2. Vietnam export quantity and other criteria from 1961 to 2018 
 Table 5. Descriptive statistics for the characteristics of Vietnamese tea (n = 58) 
Variable Unit Mean Std.Dev. 
Tea export quantity 103 tons 40.91 48.36 
Total production area 103 ha 59.91 34.14 
Total production quantity 103 tons 74.50 80.52 
Tea productivity tons ha-1 9.45 5.47 
Tea export price USD kg-1 1.23 0.27 
World production 103 tons 2820.19 1481.47 
0 
100 
200 
1960 1980 2000 2020 
Year 
 change 
series 
QuanV 
Export.QuanV 
0 
50 
100 
150 
1960 1980 2000 2020 
Year 
 change 
series 
Export.QuanV 
AreaV 
(a) Export quantity vs. production quantity 
from 1961 to 2018 
(b) Export quantity vs. production area from 
1961 to 2018 
0 
50 
100 
150 
change 
series 
ProdV 
Export.QuanV 
0 
50 
100 
150 
 change 
series 
Export.QuanV 
Export.price 
To The Nguyen et al. (2020) 
https://vjas.vnua.edu.vn/ 643 
industry in Vietnam since 2000 via each 5-year 
planning stage. 
All the general information of the regression 
promised a good model. Specifically, except for 
the total tea production, which had a negative and 
insignificant impact, the production area, export 
price, and tea productivity had positive 
significant effects on the tea export quantity of 
Vietnam. On average, when the cultivated tea 
area increased by 1,000ha, the tea export quantity 
grew by 1,307 tons (Table 6). This signifies the 
suitability of land accumulation legislated by the 
government to increase the quantity of tea 
produced in the coming years. Similarly, when 
the tea productivity increased by 1 ton per ha, the 
tea export quantity grew by 12.096 tons, on 
average, when the other variables were held 
constant. This indicates the importance of 
enhancing tea productivity to the produced 
quantity as well as the total export quantity in 
which the opportunity of acquiring a larger 
market share of Vietnamese tea might become 
possible. The total produced quantity had a 
negative but insignificant impact on the tea 
export quantity; however, this points out that the 
majority of tea produced in Vietnam had been 
used domestically rather than exported. This also 
latently indicated that the global demand for 
Vietnamese tea had fallen leading to unexported 
tea being consumed nationally. In addition, the 
latent explanation for this issue might come from 
the rumor of “dirty tea” from Vietnam that 
directly led to the difficulty in exporting 
Vietnamese tea in the period 2013-2016. 
Regarding the external factors, the tea export 
price and total global tea production had inverse 
impacts on the Vietnamese tea export quantity. 
The export price was significantly positive, while 
the world quantity was significantly negative. 
Our results represent the true story of every 
single commercial agricultural product entering 
the global market. When the price went up and 
the global demand did not change or increased, 
we tended to export more. On the other hand, 
other countries that export tea are Vietnam’s 
competitors in the global market and as a result, 
when the tea quantity of other tea exporters 
increased by 1,000 tons, our tea export quantity 
dropped by 34 tons (Table 6). To be competitive 
at the global scale, we need appropriate solutions 
to acquire a larger market share for stably 
developing the tea exports of Vietnam. 
Forecasting Vietnam’s tea export quantity to 
2030 
In Table 7, we observe the prediction results 
of Vietnam’s tea export quantity up to 2030. The 
predictions inform us that in 2019, the expected 
total tea export quantity should have reached 
180.986 thousand tons, meanwhile, the total 
export value in 2030 might increase 231% as 
compared to that in 2019. However, the predicted 
increment pace using a conventional back- 
transformation was lower than using the bias-
adjustment method from a Box-Cox 
transformation. The bias-adjustment forecasted 
that the growth rate of the tea export quantity 
could reach 291% in a period of 12 years. The 
prediction is robust evidence for Vietnamese tea 
producers and policymakers to construct 
appropriate strategies for improving tea exports 
as well as acquiring of a larger market share for 
Vietnam in the global tea market. 
Furthermore, we attempted to predict the 
 Table 6. Summary of the time-series linear model 
Variable Coefficient Std.Error t-value 
Intercept -54.397∗∗∗ 16.118 (-3.375) 
Total quantity -0.206 0.171 (-0.911) 
Production area 1.307∗∗∗ 0.012 (4.773) 
Export price 11.715∗ 0.017 (1.816) 
Productivity 12.096∗∗ 0.002 (2.761) 
World quantity -0.034∗∗∗ 0.299 (-4.525) 
 Notes: z-statistics are in the parentheses; ∗, ∗∗ and ∗∗∗ indicate significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively. 
Vietnamese tea exporting and forecasting to 2030 
644 Vietnam Journal of Agricultural Sciences 
 Table 7. Forecasting using Box-Cox transformation 
Year Back-transformation Bias-adjustment Low 95 High 95 
2019 180.986 187.081 108.826 300.993 
2020 195.366 207.141 98.925 385.824 
2021 210.887 229.209 93.161 477.385 
2022 227.643 253.478 89.479 579.143 
2023 245.730 280.158 87.071 693.489 
2024 265.253 309.478 85.533 822.603 
2025 286.328 341.691 84.632 968.704 
2026 309.077 377.071 84.229 1134.162 
2027 333.634 415.917 84.227 1321.562 
2028 360.142 458.559 84.565 1533.757 
2029 388.756 505.353 85.196 1773.913 
2030 419.643 556.691 86.089 2045.548 
export quantity of Vietnam in the next 10 years 
by using Box-Cox transformations called simple 
back-transformed forecasts (median) and bias-
adjustments (mean). When we used the mean, 
rather than the median, our analysis estimated the 
point forecasts based on a bias-adjustment. 
Figure 3 illustrates the forecasted changes of tea 
exports up to 2030 using the two methods. It can 
easily be seen that the tea export quantity 
potentially grows at a significantly high rate. The 
bias-adjustment method gave us a higher 
increment pace of tea export quantity compared 
to the conventional back-transformed forecast. 
Therefore, in order to sustainably develop 
Vietnam’s tea industry, the government needs to 
take supportive actions such as investing in in-
depth tea processing to improve Vietnam’s tea 
export quality, focusing on post-harvest 
activities, investing in organic or high-value tea 
rather than conventional tea, continuing to 
accumulate land to support the growth of 
cultivated tea areas, and maintaining high 
productivity by using hybrid seeds. 
The two major competitors of Vietnamese 
tea exports, India and Sri Lanka, have also been 
predicted to have an upward trend of total tea 
production. Ghosh (2017) studied the potential 
trend of India’s tea exports using 79 months of 
data and produced results similar to ours. 
Similarly, Kumarasinghe et al. (2018) argued 
that Sri Lanka also possessed a bright future of 
either producing or exporting tea in larger 
quantities. In addition, Chang (2015) predicted 
an increment of global tea export quantity up to 
2030. In this context, the Vietnamese tea sector 
should rely on these published data to carefully 
plan for developing tea production effectively 
and sustainably. 
Conclusions 
The study provided an overview of the 
Vietnamese tea export situation across 58 years 
from 1961 to 2018. Generally, the tea exports of 
Vietnam have had an upward trend, however, 
Vietnam witnessed a significant fall of the tea 
export quantity during 2013-2016, although the 
tea export price slightly increased. We employed 
a time-series linear model to estimate the 
relationship between the tea export quantity and 
its determinants. Except for the total domestic 
quantity, the production area, export price, and 
productivity had positively significant impacts 
on the tea export quantity, while the world tea 
production had a negatively significant effect. 
Our results suggested that in areas where tea 
was planted, tea productivity increased the tea 
export quantity, meanwhile, due to the rise of 
other countries exporting tea of a higher quality 
than Vietnamese tea, the tea export quantity led 
To The Nguyen et al. (2020) 
https://vjas.vnua.edu.vn/ 645 
Figure 3. Forecasting the trend of Vietnamese tea export quantity 
to the downfall of tea exports. The tea price had 
the least fluctuation, which could potentially 
secure a good fortune if Vietnam could export a 
larger tea quantity. Therefore, in order to 
sustainably develop Vietnam’s tea industry, the 
government needs to take supportive actions 
such as investing in in-depth tea processing to 
improve Vietnam’s tea export quality, focusing 
on post-harvest activities, investing in organic or 
high-value tea rather than conventional tea, 
continuing to accumulate land to support the 
growth of cultivated tea areas, and maintaining 
high productivity by using hybrid seeds. 
Box-Cox transformations called simple 
back-transformed forecasts and bias-adjustments 
were used to forecast the growth rate of 
Vietnamese tea export quantities until 2030. Our 
result forecasted an upward trend for Vietnamese 
tea export quantities up to 2030, which signifies 
a bright future for the export of Vietnamese tea. 
However, the domestic tea market should also be 
developed in order to increase the consumption 
of domestic tea. Our analysis opened the door for 
further research on Vietnamese tea exports in 
order to account for the impacts of the Trans-
Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional 
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). 
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