Prime Minister of Vietnam has halted exports of rice because of recent failures in crop in south provinces & has passed a rule that will see selling of rice from national reserve in order to stabilize domestic market.
Nguyen Tan Dung, Vietnam's PM has asked concerned authorities & ministries in provinces & cities to ensure food security & stabilize market prices. He has called for termination of exports of rice, except the contracts with Indonesia & Cuba for ships that had entered Vietnam before November 12 2006 while any other delivery would require his acceptance from now on
The move is seen due to frequent natural disasters & continuous attack from pests & diseases in the recent past that has lowered rice output & have surged the prices of food staple in Vietnam
PM has also urged trade, rural development & agriculture ministries to strengthen supervision of trading & exporting of food & impose heavy punishments for those who are found guilty. He has also urged provinces & cities to keep taking strong ways to cut down diseases & fulfill the forthcoming winter spring crop targets. Moreover, Rice will now be only sold from national reserves to stabilize prices in domestic market.
Exports worth 4 million tonnes of rice have already been made in 2006, accounting to US $ 1.2 billion & making the nation the world's second largest exporter of rice after Thailand. But the exports have witnessed year-on-year declines of 9.5 % & 7.8 % respectively, as per General Statistics Office's statistics.
"Since 2006, Vietnam food industry has been hard hit by crop diseases & natural disasters that have severely affected agricultural production resulting in reduced output & high prices of rice," said an analyst at RNCOS.
Projections for rice production in 2006 were around 36 million tonnes of which around 5 million tonnes was projected for exports and as per govt. figures, 4.7 metric tonnes have been exported so far.
Apart from disasters & crop diseases, low stability levels in processing, farming, marketing & storage of rice is still prevalent in Vietnam's agriculture sector and is among the biggest obstacles faced by the sector.
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