Vietnam has contracted to sell 150,000 tonnes of rice to East Timor and Sierra Leone, with loading to start this month, a state-run newspaper reported on Thursday, without giving any pricing details. This comes on the heels of the Vietnam Food Association's decision to delay a plan to buy 1 million tonnes of milled grain for a three-month stockpile on higher domestic prices, triggered by foreign buying demand.
Overall loading in July, expected to total more than 700,000 tonnes, included 100,000 tonnes for East Timor and another 50,000 tonnes of 25-percent broken rice for Sierra Leone, the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper said. The report did not give details on prices in both of the deals or the rice grade for East Timor, a small Vietnamese rice buyer which often takes the 15 percent broken grain.
The deal signed with Sierra Leone was reported after a delegation from the African nation held talks last month with Vinafood 2, Vietnam's top rice exporter. Vietnam expected to sell more rice to Africa via trading with Sierra Leone, the trade ministry in Hanoi said last month. African countries account for around a third of Vietnam's rice exports each year.
The combined volume of the deals is small compared with Vietnam's annual shipment projected to reach a record of between 7 million and 7.4 million in 2011, but the loading is crucial in raising export prices at a time of a major harvest in the Mekong Delta food basket.
Thai rice prices rose this week on speculation over higher intervention prices under an incoming government, which forced some buyers to switch to Vietnamese grain, helping push prices higher there too. Vietnamese exporters have signed a contract to ship 5.26 million tonnes of rice so far this year, nearly 4 million tonnes of which have been loaded, based on industry reports. The rice loading volume this month would rise 7.7 percent from an estimated 650,000 tonnes shipped in June as per government statistics.