Tough road ahead for Vietnam's rice exports Rice exports in Vietnam are suffering due to tough international markets and lax management over production and processing.   Export companies hope for improvement in markets Nguyen Hung Linh, President of Vietnam Food Association (VFA), said the Philippines already started to import 800,000 tonnes of rice today, April 15. In the first quarter, 31% Vietnam's export rice was sold to the Philippines. However, Vietnam may have trouble winning new contracts there due to the cheap prices of Thai rice. Vietnam has also seen a decrease of 60% in exports to Africa and a 50% reduction to America. In addition, China will now only agree to border trades with smaller volumes, as these can reduce the expenses on tariff and quota by as much as 50%. The director of Thinh Phat Food, Lam Anh Tuan, said Vietnam's exports have been shrinking because of strong competition from India and Pakistan. As a result of cheaper transport fees, the price of rice from India and Pakistan is USD30-40 per tonne cheaper. Thailand's prices are USD5-10 per tonne lower than Vietnam's. "Vietnam is in a tight situation now. We'll incur losses if get into a pricing battle, but we may lose customers if we don't," he said. According to Nguyen Van Don, from Hung Viet Company, the world's supply and demand cycle is unbalanced. Vietnam has had bountiful crops, India decided to sell its giant stock and Thailand was forced to clear out its inventory to pay farmers. Don said they would try to buy farmers' rice at market price and hoped that the situation would soon improve. Farmers will see less profit than usual, so VFA still encourages them to negotiate border trades. One expert, Vo Tong Xuan, said the solution must include three factors: strict rules on production and processing, trade promotion and higher standards of technology to ensure better quality. However, the implementation a solution has been disorganised and few enterprises have followed all the steps. Farmers are not willing to comply with Good Agriculture Practice standards (GAP) because they do not see how GAP will increase their access to the market or help their profits. PLHCM