Vietnamese rice prices at 5-year low, Thai rice steady

Vietnamese rice fell to multi-year lows this week as fresh supply came into the market, while Thai prices were steady, with an upcoming Philippine tender to purchase the grain having little impact for now, traders said on Wednesday. The Philippines has invited Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia to bid in a June 5 tender for the supply of 250,000 tonnes of 25 percent broken rice and it could buy another 250,000 tonnes later in the year.
Traders in Thailand and Vietnam, the world's second- and third-biggest rice exporters respectively after India, said the volume sought by Manila was too small to move prices up. Instead, fresh grain from Vietnam's new summer-autumn crop has pushed its 5 percent broken rice down to $345 a tonne this week, free on board (FOB), the lowest since July 2010.
"The price has fallen but buyers are not taking the grain now because the quality is low," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. Quotations for the 5 percent broken grain using the better-quality winter-spring grain were still at $355-$360 a tonne, FOB Saigon Port, traders said.
The 25 percent broken rice fell to $325-$335 a tonne, FOB, with the bottom end of the range the lowest price since February 2, based on Reuters data. Harvesting of the summer-autumn crop will peak from late June or early July and prices may soften as supply increases, traders said. Vietnam harvested an estimated 13.5 million tonnes of paddy in the previous winter-spring crop in the southern region, unchanged from last year, the Agriculture Ministry said.
Its rice exports in January-May fell 7.4 percent from a year before to 2.52 million tonnes, based on government data. Traders said the winter-spring rice stock built from a government-backed stockpiling scheme earlier this year was high and was difficult to sell as storing costs had raised the price by at least $10 a tonne above market prices. In Thailand, the 5 percent broken white rice stood at $385 per tonne, FOB, unchanged for a third week at the lowest level since June 2014, with huge government stocks continuing to hold prices down, traders said.
Thailand plans to sell 2 million tonnes of rice over the next two months from stockpiles built up under the previous administration's failed buying programme. "The government is trying to find money to get back what the rice scheme lost. Other than that, nothing looks good in the market," a trader in Bangkok said.