Vietnam has reduced the floor price for exports of 25-percent broken rice by nearly 3 percent to $350 a tonne, with domestic prices easing as harvesting peaks amid thin demand, an industry body said. The floor, set by the Ho Chi Minh City-based Vietnam Food Association, came into effect on Monday, according to a statement from the body seen by Reuters.
Exporters in the world's third-largest shipper of the grain will continue to set prices for other export grades themselves. The floor was $360 a tonne as of January 12, but the market price has fallen far below that on growing supplies and low demand, touching a 4-1/2-year low of $320-$325 a tonne on February 4.
Traders said export prices had not been boosted as recent deals, including 240,000 tonnes sold to Malaysia and 300,000 tonnes to the Philippines, were small compared to supply of some 5 million tonnes from the harvest peaking this month. Vietnamese rice export firms on Monday began buying winter-spring paddy under an annual government-backed plan to stockpile 2 million tonnes of the grain to arrest price falls during the March harvest peak. Rice exports from Vietnam, the world's No 3 exporter after Thailand and India, in the first two months of 2015 fell 34 percent from a year ago to an estimated 515,000 tonnes, the government has said.
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