New Rice Export Contracts Banned: Trade Ministry
The Vietnamese Ministry of Trade has already set a temporary ban on signing new rice export deals for this year delivery as there has been no more rice domestically stocked for outbound shipments, the Trade Research Institute announced August 1.
The move is aimed to maintain domestic food security because the country reportedly produced 17.1 million tons of paddy rice in its key winter-spring rice crop which ended in May, down 530,000 tons, or 3 per cent on year.
Meanwhile, domestic enterprises have to date signed contracts to sell 4.5 million tons of rice, meeting the export target set by the Prime Minister early this year, said an official from the institute.
Vietnam, the world’s second biggest rice exporter, was estimated to ship abroad 2.86 million tons of rice worth over USUS$904 million in the first seven months of 2007, a year-on-year decrease of 14.4 per cent in volume and 0.9 per cent in value.
The country exported 5.2 million tons of rice last year, grossing USUS$1.3 billion in revenue. Traditional markets of Vietnamese rice are mostly in the South East Asian, Middle Eastern, and African regions. (Labor Aug 2 p3)
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