Vietnamese rice export prices have risen as much as 3 percent in the past week after news that Vietnam had struck a deal to sell 500,000 tonnes to Indonesia, traders said on Wednesday. The rise in prices since the news broke last Friday has made it difficult for exporters to buy grain for loading, which could lead to delays in deliveries in coming weeks, traders said.
"Prices have jumped around $20 a tonne and farmers are holding back the newly harvested paddy, making it hard to strike any other commercial deals now," a trader at a foreign company in Ho Chi Minh City said. The 5 percent broken rice rose to $515-$530 a tonne, free on board (FOB), on Wednesday from $510-$515 a week ago, and the 25 percent broken grain jumped to $480-$490 a tonne, FOB, from $465-$475 a tonne.
Indonesia will sign a major contract to buy 500,000 tonnes of Vietnamese rice and is monitoring domestic output for further imports, state procurement agency Bulog said on Friday. "Even with the harvest 80 percent completed in July, farmers are not selling as prices rise every day," the Ho Chi Minh City trader said, adding that loading periods had been extended for several deals.
Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, is also expected to sign deals for a combined 350,000 tonnes with Malaysia and East Timor by the year-end, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday. Summer-autumn rice grade 2, used to process the 15 percent broken and 25 percent broken varieties, rose to 8,350-8,530 dong (40.7-41.6 US cents) per kg in the Delta province of An Giang on Wednesday from 8,150-8,250 dong per kg last Friday.
Vietnam's rice exports in the first seven months of 2011 rose 9 percent from the same period last year to an estimated 4.73 million tonnes, the government said last Friday. Vietnam is on track to ship a record high of between 7.0 million and 7.4 million tonnes of the grain this year, after exporting 6.83 million tonnes in 2010, itself a record.
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