Ho Chi Minh City ramps up food traceability and Halal opportunities

Ho Chi Minh City has issued a new directive and a 2026‑2030 roadmap aimed at standardising food traceability across the city. The plan requires supermarkets, convenience stores and wholesale market operators to accept only products that can be verified through technology‑based systems, such as QR codes and blockchain, especially for high‑risk categories like pork, poultry and eggs. A unified traceability database linked to the national portal will enable data sharing from breeding to retail, improving recall capacity and oversight. Implementation remains uneven, with many traditional wholesale markets still relying on handwritten logs and manual invoices.

At a workshop on June 16, city officials highlighted the rapid growth of the global Halal market, now serving more than 2 billion Muslims and projected to reach $3.36 trillion in spending by 2028. Vietnam has about 1,300 Halal‑certified enterprises, but companies face challenges in meeting technical standards, ensuring traceability and obtaining certification. The city sees the Halal sector as a major export opportunity and urges businesses to adopt robust traceability and certification systems to access fast‑growing Muslim markets abroad.