Vietnam\\\'s rice export prices expected to rise

HANOI, June 9 (VietNamNet Bridge): This is the third consecutive year Vietnam has experienced a tough year in rice exports. Bountiful rice crops have been harvested in many countries in the world, while rice inventories have increased for the seventh consecutive year.
In Thailand, Vietnam's biggest rival in rice exports, the inventories have become so high that analysts believe that the country will have to sell inventory rice at any cost to get money to pay farmers.
This will cause rice prices to drop dramatically and make Vietnam, a big rice exporter, suffer heavily. However, Vietnamese analysts don't think the market will be too gloomy as predicted. A rice exporter said it is true that Thailand has been trying to boost exports, but in fact, the export volume in the first four months of the year was just 725,000 tons a month, not really high. He also said that though the rice price has decreased significantly, the white rice price stays firm at $405 per ton.
Another noteworthy development is that 27.2 per cent of the total 2.5 million tons of rice auctioned before April 23 was rice kept in stocks for 28-33 months.
The figures were 34.6 per cent for 15-27 months, while only 38.2 per cent for two to 14 months. A western newswire earlier this year warned that Thai rice kept in stock for a long time would flood the market.
However, Vietnamese rice exporters did not know about this. Therefore, they offered a low bid of $370 per ton to obtain the contract to export 800,000 tons of rice to the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the other three tenderers' bids were $35 per ton higher than Vietnamese exporters.