Rice sales in Vietnam ground to a halt this week as exporters had almost fulfilled contracted shipments for 2007, while domestic prices surged due to thin supply, traders said on Wednesday. "The market is dead quiet now as most have finished their loading plans for this year," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said.
A Vietnam Food Association report this week said shipments as of November 13 totalled 4.34 million tonnes, just 60,000 tonnes shy of the annual export target of 4.4 million tonnes this year. Paddy prices in A Giang province, an important grower in the Mekong delta, rose to 3,500 dong (22 US cent) per kg, from 3,300 dong last week, due to a shortage at the end of the summer-autumn crop harvest.
Traders said new grains from the winter-spring crop will not be available until March and prices will remain high until new supplies hit the market then. Although exporters have ceased offering quotations for exports they said prices for reference only this week for the 5-percent broken grade soared to about $350 per tonne, free on board Saigon Port, up more than 9 percent from last week.
"Even at $350 a tonne no one can find the supply to load," the trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. This month, the government lowered its rice export target this year to 4.4 million tonnes from 4.5 million tonnes to boost food reserves after a series of floods hit the central region in October and this month.