Minister of Public Security To Lam announced the figure at the National Assembly session on Tuesday, admitting that more should be done to increase awareness of those at risk of being trafficked like ethnic minorities and women of marriageable age.

"Simultaneously, we must improve the efficiency of immigration management and enhance professional skills in detecting and fighting human trafficking rings."

International cooperation is needed for the fight, especially with neighboring countries.

Around 75 percent of trafficking victims, mostly women and children, are taken to China and sold there, Nguyen Van Pha, deputy head of the House Justice Committee, had said at a session in April.

According to Mimi Vu from Pacific Links Foundation, a prominent anti-human trafficking organization in Southeast Asia, a Vietnamese woman is sold over the Chinese border for VND1 million ($45).

Vietnam reported there were 670 trafficking victims in 2017, down from 1,128 the previous year.

Uneducated women and children from poor areas and ethnic minority groups in the northern highlands were mainly the victims.

Globally, human trafficking is worth $150 billion a year and affects over 40 million women, children and men, coercing them into forced labor and sexual exploitation.

People living in the Asia Pacific are twice as likely to be enslaved as their counterparts in developed countries, according to a report by the International Labor Organization.