The indicative price of Vietnam’s 5 per cent broken is now quoted at around US$305-307 per ton, FOB HCM City, while that of 25 per cent is US$290 per ton, up $30-40 per ton as compared to the previous month.
Paddy prices in Vietnam, meanwhile, jumped about 10 per cent in the past week as exporters scrambled to find supplies for loading at the main Saigon Port, traders said on August 8.
“Any new paddies from the summer-autumn crop harvest are immediately snapped up by exporters who were desperate to get enough rice to load the ships which have already arrived,” a trader in key rice-trading hub HCM City said.
Traders said a kilo of unhusked rice in the rice-basket Mekong Delta region rose by 10 per cent to VND3,000 ($19) this week.
“Exporters simply cannot afford to pay for feeds and penalties for the delayed loading at the Saigon Port so they are really rushing to get anything they can get,” the trader added.
Domestic enterprises have signed deals to sell 4.5 million tons of rice abroad to date, meeting the export target set by the Prime Minister early this year and still have to deliver around 1.8 million tons of the contracted rice by the end of the year.
While the summer-autumn crop harvest has been going well, the harvesting activity has caused brown grasshoppers to jump to nearby fields, spreading the damaged area, traders said.
“Brown grasshoppers and other pests could reduce the average output of the summer-autumn crop to below five tons per hectare,” a trader said.
On August 8, state media quoted the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as saying that about 150,000 hectares of paddy in the Mekong Delta have been severely damaged by brown grasshoppers. (Vietnam & World Economy)