Vietnam shipped 5.05 tonnes of rice worth 2.25 billion USD in the first ten months of 2017, up 22.3 percent in volume and 21.1 percent in value year on year, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Harvesting rice by using a combine harvester

The country earned 206 million USD from exporting 430,000 tonnes of rice in October alone.

From January to October, China remained the biggest importer of Vietnamese rice when it was the destination of 39.3 percent of Vietnam’s exported rice. It is followed by the Philippines (9.6 percent) and Malaysia (8 percent).

According to the Vietnam Food Association (VFA), regional countries’ demand for imported rice will rise sharply in the last months of the year. The recent serious flooding in Bangladesh damaged about 1million tonnes of rice in this country, turning the South Asian nation into a big rice importer with a forecast volume of up to 1.5 million tonnes in 2017.

The Philippines’s rice stockpile declined, forcing its Government to step up purchasing rice. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is predicted to import 650,000 tonnes of rice this year, compared to just 60,000 tonnes in 2016. African markets are also recovering their rice import, the association said.

Amid positive signs like a strong increase in the number of contracts registered for export in the remaining months, the VFA raised the rice export target this year from 5.2 million tonnes to 5.6 million tonnes.-VNA