The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has asked South Central and Central Highlands provinces to strive to produce at least 2.5 million tonnes of rice in this year’s upcoming crops.

 

The MARD made the call during a conference held in Buon Ma Thuot city of the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak to review rice production in the 2017-2018 winter-spring crop in the regions and launch this year’s production plan.

 

Accordingly, the provinces plan to grow more than 448,600 ha of rice in this year’s upcoming crops, with half of them being planted in the summer-autumn crop.

 

The ministry also instructed the provinces to arrange suitable time for rice growing and apply cultivation techniques to avoid drought and lessen its impacts to rice production.

 

In the 2017-2018 winter-spring crop, the South Central and Central Highlands provinces planted more than 320,470 ha of rice, yielding an estimated output of about 2.03 million tonnes, a rise of 60,200 tonnes compared to last year’s crop.

 

The MARD reported that the country’s rice exports in the January – March period totalled 1.36 million tonnes worth 669 million USD, representing year-on-year rises of 9.4 percent in volume and 24 percent in value. China remained the top importer of Vietnamese rice, accounting for 24.4 percent of total exports

 

Last year, Vietnam earned 2.6 billion USD from exporting 5.8 million tonnes of rice.-VNA