Vietnam, the world’s second-largest rice exporter, announced yesterday that it would increase exports of the grain by 1 million tonnes after determining the country had sufficient supplies for the domestic market.
The move comes after officials had limited rice exports this year to 3.5 million tonnes in a bid to keep domestic prices down in a period of soaring inflation and to ensure its stocks for local consumption amid the global food crisis.
“Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Thursday ordered the acceleration of rice exports to help farmers sell all of their harvest and to contribute to providing supplies to the world market,” the government said on its Web site.
“After having been able to sufficiently balance domestic consumption for 2008, Vietnam is now capable of exporting a total of about 4.5 million tonnes of rice,” the government said.
Last month, inflation in Vietnam surged 25 percent from the previous year, driving prices for rice and other grains up 68 percent, Vietnam’s bureau of statistics said.
Speculation about a rice shortage fuelled a run on supplies of the grain at supermarkets in April.
But the government said the harvest “was very good this year, in the north as well as in the south.”
“Vietnam anticipates harvesting about 37 million tonnes of paddy [non-processed rice] in 2008, which is 1 million more tonnes than in 2007,” the government said.
Since January, Vietnam has exported more than 2.2 million tonnes of rice — 19 percent more than for the same period last year, government statistics showed.
That increase in rice exports, combined with worldwide spiraling inflation, has led to a sharp rise in revenues.
From January to last month, Vietnam earned US$1.2 billion off the exports — an increase of 94.1 percent over the same period last year, official estimates said.
World grain prices have risen sharply this year, a trend blamed on higher energy and fertilizer costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of farmland to biofuel plantations, industry and cities, and price speculation.
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