Hanoi, Jan 19 - Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter, will keep grain shipments unchanged this year at 4.5 million tonnes because its cultivation area has been shrinking, an industry official said on Saturday.
About 70 percent would go to Asian buyers such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, while Bangladesh would emerge as a new customer, Vietnam Food Association Chairman Truong Thanh Phong told Reuters.
"We are no longer able to export 5 million tonnes a year as the total area has decreased now," Phong said in an interview.
"In the past we were able to ship that much also from the stocks carried over from the previous years," he said.
Rice shipments from Vietnam, the world's second largest exporter after Thailand, peaked at 5.2 million tonnes in 2005 and have since been easing as farmers shifted part of their fields in the Mekong delta food basket to raising shrimp.
Last year, Vietnam's total rice area fell 1.7 percent to 7.2 million hectares (17.8 million acres), with a larger drop of 2.3 percent in the southern region, government figures show.
Shrimps and fish are the fourth-largest export item after crude oil, textiles and footwear, while rice ranks eighth.
The country's rice industry has planned this year's sales at 4.5 million tonnes, unchanged from 2007, Phong said a day after government and industry officials met to discuss the annual grain export plan.
He said the Industry and Trade Ministry aimed to ship 700,000 tonnes between January and March, then 1.5 million tonnes each in the second and the third quarters, following the harvest of the winter-spring crop, Vietnam's top yielding crop.
Exports would then slow to 800,000 tonnes during the last three months of 2008, Phong said, adding that the figures were preliminary and subject to government approval.
EARNINGS TO RISE
He said tightening global supply this year, including a lower volume projected from Thailand, would support export prices.
Thai rice prices are expected to surge and stay high throughout 2008 while shipments would ease to 8.7 million tonnes from 9.4 million tonnes in 2007, Thailand's Rice Exporters Association president said early this month.
Vietnam's rice export revenues are expected to rise 17 percent to $1.7 billion this year, state media quoted industry forecasts released at the meeting on Friday as showing.
Given the tighter supply, the food association which oversees grain production and export, has raised the export price floor.
It said the 5-percent broken rice must be at least $385 a tonne, free-on-board, this month and in February. That should rise to $400 in March while the 25-percent broken grade should be $360 a tonne, up 20 percent from last year, the Liberation Saigon daily said on Saturday.
Last month the association forecast export prices would firm only 6 percent this year, with the 5-percent broken grade reaching $340 and the 25-percent broken rice $320 a tonne.
Vietnamese rice buyers include Indonesia, the Philippines, Cuba, Malaysia, African countries, Russia, Iraq, Iran and China.
Phong said Vietnamese firms will bid at the Philippine tender on Jan. 29 at which Manila would seek to buy 550,000 tonnes of rice to partly cover a shortfall in local supply.
"This year we would sell rice to Bangladesh as a new market," he added without elaborating.
Bangladesh needs nearly 2 million tonnes of food grains, including rice, by the end of June after floods and a deadly cyclone damaged crops last year, officials there said.
The Bangladeshi government has contracted to import 400,000 tonnes of rice and was trying to procure another 600,000 tonnes from neighbouring countries.