HANOI, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam earned over 8.8 billion U.S. dollars from exporting seafood in 2018, mainly prawns and catfish, posting a year-on-year increase of 6.3 percent, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Thursday.

Last month alone, the country's seafood exports raked in 800 million U.S. dollars, up 8.8 percent against the same period last year. Its largest importers included China, the United States and Japan.

Vietnam will strive to make seafood export turnovers of 10 billion U.S. dollars this year, the ministry said. Meanwhile, it will raise aquaculture output by 3.6 percent to over 4.3 million tons, and improve quality by further applying modern technologies.

In the coming time, Vietnamese firms will continue to face difficulties in exporting seafood to the European Union and the United States which currently impose strict control over seafood imports, according to the local experts.