Cuba buys 250,000 T rice from Vietnam

Cuba buys 250,000 T rice from Vietnam

HANOI, April 5 (Reuters) - Cuba has bought 250,000 tonnes of Vietnamese
rice, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday, after the Latin
American nation reported production falling at home last year.

The purchase was under a government contract signed recently, Vietnam
Food Association Chairman Truong Thanh Phong was quoted by the Nguoi Lao
Dong (Labourer) newspaper as saying. He gave no further details of the deal.

Bangladesh has also been in talks with Vietnam to buy between 150,000
and 200,000 tonnes of rice, Phong said.

It was not clear if the talks were separate or for the contract covering
200,000 tonnes Bangladesh said it would sign with Vietnam in the week
ending April 3. [ID:nSGE72O0BA]

Vietnam's contract with Cuba involves a small volume, but along with
supplies for the Philippines and Indonesia, it helps keep rice prices up
when the world's second-largest exporter of the grain is ending the
harvest of its top rice crop.

News on the deal with Cuba came after the country's statistics office
said in January that rice output last year dropped 12.2 percent from
2009 to 247,400 tonnes, affecting effort to cut massive imports of one
of Cuba's main staples. [ID:nN07198016]

Last year Hanoi-based Vietnam Northern Food Corp, which has been in
charge of handling government deals for the Latin American country, sold
400,00 tonnes of rice to Cuba.

Farmers in the Mekong Delta have harvested 965,000 hectares (2.38
million acres) of the winter-spring crop, Vietnam's largest with grain
mainly used for export, as of March 30, or 62 percent of the crop's
total area, the food association said in a report.

The harvest, expected to provide 3 million tonnes of milled rice for
export, is due to end this month.

But paddy prices in the Delta have increased 4 percent in the past week
to 5.7-5.8 million dong per tonne thanks to loading demand for recent
contracts, the report said.

In late March the Philippines said it had agreed to import 200,000
tonnes of rice from Vietnam, a deal expected to push up Vietnamese
prices. [ID:nSGE72M00K]

The deal followed Indonesia's purchase in February of 400,000 tonnes of
Vietnamese rice. [ID:nHAN385762]

Vietnam's rice exports between January and March rose 17 percent from
the same period last year to an estimated 1.69 million tonnes, the
government has said.

2011-04-05 04:57:52

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