Hanoi, June 1 - Vietnam has exported an estimated 2.96 million tonnes of rice during the first five months of this year, a rise of 62 percent from a year earlier, the Vietnam Food Association said on Monday.
The industry body said earnings from the grain between January and May soared 43.5 percent from the same period last year to $1.22 billion. The export volume accounted for nearly 60 percent of the 5 million tonnes Vietnam planned to export this year.
The food association had proposed that the government raise the annual shipment target to 5.2 million tonnes, a level already forecast by a U.S. Department of Agriculture attache in Vietnam. [ID:nBKK165974] [ID:nN07340009]
Hanoi has yet to fix the final annual rice export target. Domestic rice prices were forecast to ease in coming weeks due to ample supply of the grain and a thin import demand, an Industry and Trade Ministry report said on Monday, bucking the trend of firming U.S. rice futures.
Mekong Delta farmers had completed harvesting the winter-spring crop, their largest crop among the three crops each year, and have just finished planting the next summer-autumn crop, the report said.
U.S. rice futures on the Chicago Board of Trade rose to a 2-½ week high on Friday, breaking out of a week-long trading range amid a sinking dollar, traders said. [ID:nN29433544]
The food association, in charge of regulating rice exports in the world's second-largest export nation after Thailand, said paddy prices in the Mekong Delta have eased nearly 10 percent in the past month to 4,100-4,300 dong ($0.23-$0.24) per kg now.
The Mekong Delta food basket in Vietnam's southern region supplies 90 percent of the country's rice exports.
The government said last week that southern farmers harvested 11.8 million tonnes of winter-spring paddy, up 1.8 percent from a similar crop last year thanks to a slight rise in yield.
Harvesting of the summer-autumn crop often peaks in late July or August, before seasonal flood waters arrive in the delta from Cambodia. ($1=17,770 dong)