Supply for high-grade rice exporters limited

At a recent meeting on rice exports in Ho Chi Minh City, Huynh Van Khoe, director of Lotus Rice, said his company annually exported thousands tons of high-grade rice to the EU market, which prefers high quality over low price rice, but often “faces insufficient supply of high-quality rice to export.”

“Our partners do not too focus on price, but we face a shortage of high-quality rice to supply them with,” Khoe said.

The agriculture sector needs to ensure better quality of rice seeds and better planning and development of rice-growing areas to churn out a bigger output of high-grade rice, he said.

Another rice exporter, Trung An Hi-tech Farming JSC, exports fragrant rice branded ST24 and ST25 to European markets with the price of $1,250 per ton, and other kinds of fragrant rice $800-925 per ton.

“The quality of rice needs to be more stable to maintain prestige in exports,” said Nguyen Ngoc Nam, president of the Vietnam Food Association. “Producers need to control residues of pesticides in cultivation so that exporters can offer high-priced products to high-end markets.”

Vietnam exported over 1.85 million tons of rice worth $981 million in the first quarter of this year, posting respective year-on-year rises of 23% and 34%, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The average export price rose nearly 9% to $529 per ton.

The export price of Vietnamese 5% broken rice in the first quarter was higher than the similar grain in Thailand and India.

The value of Vietnamese rice exports to many European markets surged thanks to the shipment of fragrant rice and rice with high added value.

According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the Philippines was still the largest Vietnamese rice importer in the first quarter, importing 893,000 tons valued at $450 million, followed by China, with 340,000 tons worth $200 million.

The country exported a total of 7.13 million tons of rice worth $3.45 billion in 2022, up 13.8% in volume and 5.1% in value against 2021.