An abundance of demand from the Chinese market has caused Vietnamese rice prices to quickly jump.
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| Minister of Industry & Trade Vu Huy Hoang issues measures to make sure there are no rice price disruptions (Photo by Huu Nghi) |
Meanwhile, the government has taken steps to ensure the sudden rise in Chinese orders doesn’t threaten the food security of Vietnam.
The Vietnam Food Association (VFA) points to large orders from China causing the domestic rice market to undergo unusual development.
In one month, Chinese rice dealers have bought 500,000-600,000 tonnes of rice from the Cuu Long Delta area, leading to an increase in prices.
Low quality rice from the Cuu Long Delta area has gone up by VND757 ($0.04) to VND947 ($0.05) per kilogram this month while high quality rice has gone up by VND568 ($0.03) to VND757 ($0.04) per kilogram.
Currently, the export price of 5 percent broken rice (which means 5 out of 100 rice seeds are broken) has risen to $375 per tonne this month compared to $345-355 per tonne last month. The export price of 25 percent broken rice is now $330 per tonne.
On August 9, Huynh Minh Hue, General Secretary of VFA said, “As of July, Vietnam has exported 4 million out of the 6 million tonnes of rice which customers had already ordered. Thus, Vietnam might not meet the export target of over 6 million tonnes of rice as VFA proposed to the government. The reason is that the summer-autumn rice crops were harvested earlier than expected and the remaining stocks for export are limited even though the demand from China is strongly increasing.”
“Local rice companies planned to stockpile 1 million tonnes of rice in September according to a government backed plan but they have changed the plan to buy this amount of rice in August,” added Hue.
It’s anticipated that the prices of rice would keep growing. VFA held an urgent meeting with 48 rice enterprises and decided to continue buying rice under the government backed plan. Meanwhile, they will also reserve sufficient stocks in a bid to ensure market intervention as needed to avoid rice price fever, especially in Ho Chi Minh City.
Minister of Industry & Trade, Vu Huy Hoang, said that many local buying agents had offered high prices to gather rice for export to China.
“It’s an unusual development. The Prime Minister has directed the Ministry of Industry & Trade to coordinate with other relevant ministries to ensure Vietnamese farmers made profit as well as protection the nation’s food security,” added Hoang.
He also requested that the VFA and food corporations increase the necessary amount of rice stockpiles to control the market.
| Nguyen Tri Ngoc, Director of the Cultivation Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that farmers would harvest 5 million tonnes of rice. Vietnam will have another 1 million tonnes collected from Cambodia. At present, Vietnam still has rice stockpiles. (Source: Thanh nien). |
