HANOI, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) — Vietnam targeted to earn some 7.1 billion U.S. dollars from exports of seafood in 2017, said the country's Directorate of Fisheries (DoF) on Friday.

Nguyen Ngoc Oai, deputy head of DoF made the remark at a conference to implement tasks for the year 2017, in capital Hanoi on Friday.

Besides, next year, the country is striving to have total seafood output reach 6.85 million tons, of which, some 3.05 million tons are exploited and 3.8 million tons are cultivated.

In order to realize the target, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Vu Van Tam at the conference said the sector needs to make use of its advantages in aquaculture and exploitation in 2017.

Specifically, the country has a total of 700,000 hectares of brackish-water shrimp cultivation with low productivity, said Tam, urging that next year, the country will work to increase output, well control diseases, promote and expand markets for the product.

Meanwhile, Vietnam should better deal with technical barriers by catfish importers, build a national catfish branding development strategy as well as make breakthroughs in over 90-million-people domestic market.

According to the DoF, in 2016, Vietnam pocketed around 7 billion U.S. dollars from seafood exports. The total seafood output hit over 6.7 million tons, including 3.1 million tons exploited, over 3.6 million tons cultivated in an area of 1.3 million hectares this year.