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Vietnam rice export ban until June
AFP, Hanoi
Vietnam's government will ban new rice export contracts until June, despite a bumper harvest, to ensure food security and boost the value of the grain, state media reported Saturday.
Vietnam is the world's second largest rice exporter after Thailand, and growers have benefited from sharply rising world grain prices, even as domestic consumers have been hit hard by double-digit inflation.
Industry and Tirade Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Bien said the export ban would be maintained despite a spring crop in the southern Mekong delta, the main rice basket, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.
The move would help to"reduce the quantity but increase the value and export revenues, while ensuring food security and serving the state's interest," Bien said, according to a VNA report in the Tin The daily.
Vietnam has so far this year exported more than a million tonnes of rice, earning more than 400 million dollars, Bien was quoted as saying.
In contradictory data, the Government Statistics Office (GSO) said Friday Vietnam had exported almost 1.6 million tonnes of rice, earning 775 million dollars, in the year's first four months, boosting earnings by 73 percent.
Bien said recent shipments to the Philippines, a rice deficit country, had earned a record 1,200 dollars per tonne.
World rice prices have skyrocketed, a trend blamed on
higher energy and fertiliser costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of rice farmland to biofuel plantations, industry and cities, and on pricespeculation.
Bien predicted world rice prices may hit 1,500 dollars per tonne next month and that they will continue to rise until 2010, said theVNA report.
Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung earlier capped 2008 national rice exports at 3.5 million tonnes, down from a previous target of 4.5 million tonnes, aiming to maintain national supplies and reduce domestic inflation.
Vietnamese consumer prices, driven by higher food and energy costs, have risen by more than 17 percent in the first four months of 2008 year-on-year, fuelling popular anger and a spate of labour strikes.