Hanoi, Oct 2 - Vietnam, the world's second-largest exporter of coffee and rice, will harvest 9.6 percent more coffee this year while its rice output will also rise 1.1 percent from last year, the government said on Monday.
The General Statistics Office said coffee output from the world's top robusta producer would total 824,400 tonnes, or 13.74 million bags, during this calendar year ending in December.
It did not use the "crop year" term, the period between October and September, more popularly used among traders dealing with the commodity, the second-most traded one after crude oil.
Vietnam uses 'tonne', or 1,000 kilograms, in the unit for its coffee estimates. One bag contains 60 kilograms of coffee beans.
The office said the coffee area this year would drop 1.7 percent from last year to 488,800 hectares (1.21 million acres).
Output of paddy, or unhusked rice, would rise 1.1 percent to 36.2 million tonnes this year, even though yields were lower in the key winter-spring and summer-autumn crops, the office said.
"Favourable weather in northern, southeastern and central highland provinces and higher buying prices of rubber, coffee, tea and pepper have encouraged production to develop," the government's statistics office said in a report. Rubber output this year is estimated to rise 11.8 percent from last year to 538,600 tonnes, less than 540,000 to 550,000 tonnes projected by the Vietnam Rubber Association.
The government said the black pepper output this year was projected to grow 2.4 percent to 82,200 tonnes.
The estimate compared with industry forecasts which said Vietnam's spice output would be unchanged from last year at 100,000 tonnes.
Rubber plantations would expand 3.9 percent this year to 501,500 hectares, while the black pepper acreage would ease 1.6 percent to 48,300 hectares.
Vietnam is the world's top producer and exporter of black pepper and is the fourth-biggest exporter of rubber.
Meanwhile, green tea output from the world's seventh-largest exporter of the beverage would rise 5.2 percent from last year to nearly 600,000 tonnes.