Vietnam revised up by a quarter its rice export forecast for this year to a record high of 7.1 million to 7.4 million tonnes, citing rising shipments in the first quarter, the Agriculture Ministry said on Friday. The upward revision, after Vietnam shipped a record of 6.83 million tonnes in 2010, puts the Southeast Asian nation on track to grab a bigger share of the global rice market from top exporter Thailand, which will still keep its leading role this year.
The new forecast, up from 5.5-6.1 million tonnes projected earlier, is based on the export volume in the first quarter which was 400,000 tonnes above the same period in 2010, the ministry said in a monthly report. It cited forecasts by the ministry-run Centre for Informatics and Statistics, but said the final volume for 2011 will depend on market changes in the remaining months of this year as well as policies in major rice producing and importing nations.
Thailand plans to export between 9.0 million and 9.5 million tonnes of rice this year, after shipping 9.03 million tonnes in 2010. Vietnam has expanded its rice buyer list to include Australia but the volume was still small, making less than 1 percent of the first quarter's shipments, while Asian destinations accounted for 78.45 percent, followed by Africa with nearly 19 percent, the Agriculture Ministry's report said.
The report gave no price forecasts for the rest of 2011. Vietnam's 5 percent broken rice rose about 4 percent from last week to $470-$480 a tonne, free-on-board basis, while Thai rice of the same grade eased 1 percent to $460 a tonne from $465 a week ago due mostly to thin demand.
Rice exports in the first quarter jumped 42 percent to 1.85 million tonnes, and the average export price rose 2.4 percent from the same period last year to $477.8 a tonne, Vietnam Food Association data showed. Rice export prices will remain high through June because of loading demand, including that under government contracts for Cuba, the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Bangladesh, industry officials were quoted in state media as saying.
Exporters have contracts to load 1.5 million tonnes in the second quarter, while they have around 1.4 million tonnes in stock, a factor to support prices despite a major harvest was ending in the Mekong Delta, the food association said. Winter-spring paddy in the Delta edged up to 5,200-6,300 dong (25-30.3 US cents) per kg this week from 5,200-6,200 dong last week, after news that Cuba has bought 250,000 tonnes from Vietnam and loading of 100,00 parboiled rice for Bangladesh was under way.
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