According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, riceexport grew 23.8 percent in volume to over 2.2 million tonnes, earning 1.11billion USD, up 39.7 percent in value in the first four months of this year, ahigh figure over the past five years.
It was partly attributable to Vietnam’s winning of riceexport contracts, including 141,000 tonnes in January and 300,000 tonnes inApril to Indonesia, which will be delivered from May – July.
In early May, Vietnam won another contract of shipping130,000 tonnes of rice to the Philippines.
Apart from traditional markets, new markets such asBangladesh, Turkey and Iraq also posted Vietnamese rice import growth, increasingfrom 11to 91 times in volume and from 16 to 61 times in value.
During May, a number of export contracts from the privatesector are expected to be signed with hundreds of thousands of tonnes involume. They also seek opportunities in markets signing free trade deals withVietnam such as the Republic of Korea and Australia, said the Vietnam FoodAssociation (VFA).
Compared to 2017, Vietnam’s rice export prices moved upnearly 15 percent to over 500 USD per tonne.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade said demand forhigh-quality products such as glutinous rice, japonica and broken rice isrising. Last year, low and medium-quality white rice export only accounted for3.88 percent and 8.24 percent of the total.
The VFA suggested the government, ministries and agenciesdiversify markets to facilitate rice export, which should be responsibility ofnot only the Ministry of Industry and Trade but the Ministry of Agriculture andRural Development also./.