VietNamNet Bridge – Hai Quan newspaper has quoted foreign sources who say that Thailand will sell both newly harvested and inventoried rice at low prices. This will create challenges for Vietnam, which competes with other rice exporters by offering low prices.

“Reasonable prices are the biggest competitive advantage of Vietnamese rice. But now, if Thailand also sells rice cheap, the Vietnamese competitiveness will not work,” an analyst commented.

Dat Viet commented that Vietnam several times has failed in international bids, even though it offered very low prices to obtain contracts.

Nguyen Ngoc De from Can Tho University commented that this was a result of the “sell cheap, buy cheap” policy pursued by Vietnamese exporters.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh has urged relevant units to carry out surveys to discover how the Thai policy would affect Vietnam.

In late November, the Vietnam Food Association (VFA) unexpectedly lowered the floor export price to $380 from $410 per ton for 25 percent broken rice.

Vo Tong Xuan, the leading rice expert in Vietnam, commented that the move shows the Vietnamese exporters’ intention to speed up the sale of rice in the world market.

However, Xuan noted this is not good news for farmers, because when exporters sell rice cheaply, they will not pay farmers high prices for rice.

Analysts noted that while Vietnamese enterprises are busy selling stocked rice in order to balance the export volume in the last months of the year, Thai exporters have used the time to gain the Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese, Filipino and African markets.

They said that the competition will be stiffer for Vietnamese exporters, who have to compete with Thailand, India, Pakistan and Cambodia.

In 2014, Cambodia’s PhkaRomdoul for the third consecutive time is recognized as the most delicious rice in the world. Cambodia has made big progress from an unknown rice producer to a big rice exporter in the world.

A report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) showed that Vietnam exported 443,000 tons in November, worth $217 million, raising total export volume in the last 11 months to 6.03 million tons, worth $2.79 billion.

The average export price was $460.9 per ton, an increase of 4.61 percent over the same period last year.

According to the National Steering Committee on Rice Export Regulation, the demand is still high with big importers in the region trying to increase imports.

Meanwhile, some key markets continue making transactions. China, for example, still tops the list of Vietnam’s rice biggest importers, which consumes 31.1 percent of Vietnam’s exports.

Dat Viet