Some rice traders are mixing low quality rice into export shipments of fragrant rice, threatening the integrity of Vietnam's rice export industry.
Unhealthy competition poses risk to fragrant rice export
The Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry said that in the first three months of 2015, exports of fragrant rice rose 47 percent on a year earlier.
Vietnam Food Association said fragrant rice was fetching USD500-600 a tonne.
But a representative of a rice processing and exporting company in Can Tho said, "Some firms buy low quality fragrant rice and mix it with export quality rice. They sell it at low prices, but still advertise it as high quality fragrant rice to attract customers."
Vietnam lacks a testing system for monitoring the consistency of rice being sold for export.
Tran Ngoc Trung, the director of Vinh Phat JSC, said Japanese and US markets have more than 600 rules relating to imported rice and Vietnam is only able to meet a third of those on its own. Rice has to be sent to Thailand, Japan or the US for testing.
Vietnam is facing growing new competition from the likes of Cambodia for market share.
The director of Vietnam Southern Food Corp, Huynh The Nang, said better infrastructure and more testing equipment was needed to monitor quality.