CAN THO – A Dong Hong cargo ship arrived in HCMC to transport over 11,000 tons of rice to South Korea in early 2022.
Pham Thai Binh, director of Trung An Hi-Tech Farming JSC, the supplier of the rice shipment, told The Saigon Times on January 10 that the firm won a bid to export 11,111 tons of brown rice at US$574 per ton to the Northeast Asian country.
The handover of rice on the first days of 2022 showed positive signs and boosted Vietnam’s exports of high-quality rice to the choosy market this year, said Binh.
“South Korea is a potential rice buyer. The country imports over 700,000 tons of rice a year,” he added.
Last year, the firm won deals to supply over 48,700 tons of rice to South Korea, accounting for 83% of the total volume of rice the country held tenders for to purchase rice from Vietnam.
Binh said that in 2021, Trung An Hi-Tech Farming JSC sold 197,000 tons of rice, including 63,000 tons of rice valued at US$31 million that was exported.
“The firm targets to export 90,000 tons of rice worth US$50 million in 2022,” said Binh.
In the first half of December 2021, Vietnam exported over 215,400 tons of rice worth US$111.1 million, up 1.9% in volume and 2.9% in value year-on-year, according to data from the Vietnam Food Association.
From January to mid-December 2021, the country’s rice export amounted to 5.9 million tons valued at US$3.1 billion, up 0.8% in volume and 6.8% in value year-on-year.
The United States Department of Agriculture forecast that Vietnam’s rice export will reach 6.4 million tons in 2022.