HAU GIANG (VIETNAM) -- Rice prices could go up by nearly 50 per cent next year as world demand surges, according to Truong Thanh Phong, chairman of the Viet Nam Food Association.

He said that demand for rice was increasing after typhoons and drought damaged crops in the Philippines and India.

"Africa is also seeking more rice from Viet Nam," he said at the country’s first Rice Festival that took place in Hau Giang Province last Sunday.

World prices might rise to about US$800 per tonne by the end of the second quarter next year but would not reach the highs of 2008, Phong said.

The export price of Vietnamese 5 per cent broken rice is now about $520 a metric tonne. It compares with $559 per tonne for the same category of Thai rice, and $590 per tonne for 100 per cent grade-B Thai white rice, the regional export benchmark.

Rice futures traded in Chicago have gained 38 per cent from this year’s low of $11.195 per 100 pounds in March. They reached a record $25.07 in April 2008 as concerns over shortages prompted countries like Viet Nam and India to curb exports, sparking food riots across the globe.

Viet Nam might ship as much as 6 million tonnes of rice next year, Phong said.

The country would have about 1.8 million tonnes from this year’s stock and a new harvest available for shipment in the first quarter of 2010, he said.

Viet Nam expected a record 6 million to 6.2 million tonnes in rice exports this year, topping the earlier high mark by up to 20 per cent, Minister of Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang told the National Assembly in Ha Noi on Nov 18.

Viet Nam shipped 4.65 million tonnes of rice last year and 5.17 million tonnes in 2005, according to the General Statistics Office.

Still, slumping prices meant the value of rice exports dropped 6 per cent in the 11 months through November to $2.56 billion, even as shipments increased, the GSO reported . Rice was Viet Nam’s sixth-biggest export by value in the first 11 months of the year.

"The Government is trying to boost rice exports to meet the country’s economic growth targets," Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Thanh Bien said at a conference in Hau Giang last Saturday.

Foreign currency revenue from exports would ease the dollar shortage in the country, Bien said. -- NNN-VNS