HCMC — Vietnam exported more than 7.5 million tons of rice in the first 11 months of the year, but imported a larger volume of corn, official data showed.
The National Statistics Office under the Ministry of Finance said rice exports in November reached 358,000 tons, valued at US$190 million. This marked a year-on-year drop of 49.1% in volume and 57.1% in value.
From January to November, Vietnam shipped nearly 7.52 million tons of rice worth over US$3.85 billion. Compared with the same period last year, export volume fell 11.1% and export value declined 27.4%.
Rice export prices last week were largely unchanged from the previous week. Trading activity remained slow as market demand stayed weak.
In contrast, Vietnam imported 962,000 tons of corn in November, with a value of US$227 million. Corn imports were down 35% in volume and 35.7% in value from a year earlier.
For the first 11 months, corn imports totalled nearly 10.48 million tons, worth about US$2.6 billion. The figures were down 5.7% in volume and 3.5% in value year-on-year.
Despite being the world’s second-largest rice exporter, Vietnam imported about three million tons more corn than the volume of rice it exported over the period. Corn imports were around 1.4 times higher than rice exports by volume.
