Vietnam resumes rice exports

The world’s second-largest exporter of rice allow limited sales and reiterated a limit of 3.5m tonnes of exports for the first nine months of the year.

Vietnam this year cut its 2008 export
target from 4m tonnes to about 3.5m tonnes. Last year it sold about
4.5m tonnes of rice. Rice traders said that the Vietnamese floor
price would become a de facto global floor price, thwarting hopes of
rice costs falling back to pre-crisis levels. The price of rice
surged last month to a record high of $1,100 a tonne, up from $300 a
year ago.

Other large exporters, including India,
China and Egypt, have restricted or banned rice exports. However,
Cambodia, the world’s eighth-largest rice exporter, this month
relaxed restrictions on overseas sales of the grain.