In 2013, Vietnam’s rice export is expected to face many difficulties, with severe competition from Thailand, Myanmar and India. Some of its markets have announced reductions in import amounts.
According to economic experts, the world's rice supply is abundant, India has a winning season, Thailand's rice inventory is up to 12 - 13 million tonnes, and their ability to sell low-priced rice to the market has created more pressure for Vietnam rice export in 2013.
According to the Vietnam Food Association (VFA), some potential markets of Vietnam are predicted to reduce rice imports. The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia claimed to increase production enough to meet domestic food demand or reduce maximum import rice in 2013. In addition, China in 2012 rose to become the largest rice importer of Vietnam. According to calculations of the VFA, rice production yield in the 1st quarter of the Mekong Delta is estimated at 3.8 million tonnes, with 800,000 tonnes from 2012, making the inventory to about 4.6 million tones. If excluded 1.1 million tons of rice exported in the first three months of the year, this quarter still had 3.5 million tonnes unsold. The programme of storage one million tonnes of rice by the Government has been completed. However, the only one fifthof the rice harvest in the spring was sold.
Under the pressure of the business on shrinking export markets, economic experts believe that it is advisable to put rice in the national key trade promotion programmes helping enterprises to expand market conditions and sign more export contracts. Looking back on the contracts signed in 2012, enterprises of the VFA only had 21 percent of big contracts, and the rest were small. These small contracts are usually based on loose foundation. The Government should create an open credit mechanism and support interest rate to help enterprises with the export market expansion.
One of the essential elements outlined in many seminars and conferences on this sector warned by experts which is to raise rice export value of Vietnam to solve the problem of quality. Currently, Vietnam export mainly low-standard rice, difficult to compete with price of Thailand and India rice, so the economic efficiency is not high. Expanding production through large field model, transferring of science and technology, choosing the quality seeds and building brand for Vietnam's rice are imperative today. Recently, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has instructed that for Vietnam’s exported rice to reach the match value, it is necessary to improve the quality of rice. In the future, the area of Vietnam's rice production could reduce but the economic value must be raised. Rice sector strategy should not keep going in the direction of increasing the volume of rice exports. In the next year, we need to focus on increasing the quality to raise the price, and restructure rice consumption chain to increase profits for farmers. So, the rice production and consumption are sustainable in the long term.
Q.C
Vietnamese
