Vietnamese agricultural enterprises grow slowly, partly because of the shortage of clear development strategy, outdated business practice, and sluggish restructure, local newspaper Vietnam Investment Review reported Monday.

More than 5,000 out of 16,000 agricultural enterprises in Vietnam are incurring losses, the paper quoted sources from the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The agricultural growth annually stood at 5.4 percent between 2001 and 2005, while the economic growth averaged 7.5 percent each year. State-owned farms use a quarter of Vietnam's arable land, but bring in just one percent of the country's gross domestic product.

Vietnam poured a total of 130 trillion Vietnamese dong (nearly 8.2 billion U.S. dollars) into the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector in the 2001-2005 period, doubling the investment in the previous five years, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

Vietnam exported nearly 4.8 billion dollars worth of farm, forest and fishery products in the first half of this year, a year- on-year rise of over 31 percent, according to the country's Trade Ministry. It has targeted to export over 7.3 billion dollars worth of the products in 2006, up from nearly 6.9 billion dollars in 2005.

Source: Xinhua