SEOUL, March 14 (Yonhap) -- The government will increase support for the local rice processing industry this year by providing more low-interest loans, the farm ministry said Sunday.   The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said a total of 60 billion won (US$53.1 million) will be set aside this year for easy loans, up six-fold from the 10 billion won offered in 2009.

 Vietnamese rice businesses will increase their stockpiles by another 1 million tons in the first half of this year to support prices during a high-capacity winter-spring harvest. The association announced last week a plan to buy 600,000 tons in March and 400,000 tons in April for the stockpile. The government recently asked the Ministry of Finance to spend VND450 billion, or US$24 million, buying 50,000 tons of rice for the national reserve. It also ordered the ministry to reserve VND35.2 billion, or $1.9 million, for maintenances and equipment at national rice warehouses.

 MANILA, Philippines - Rice prices in top exporting countries Thailand and Vietnam may fall more as the Philippines may not tender for new supplies until after national polls in May, sources said on Friday.The absence of demand from the world's biggest rice buyer, the Philippines, would further weigh on Asian rice prices, with benchmark Thai rice already $100 off a December peak of $630 a ton, which was boosted by several tenders in Manila in 2009.An industry group in Vietnam, the world's second largest rice exporter after Thailand, has capped the price of 5% broken rice at $440 a ton, free-on-board, hoping it could come to the next Philippine tender with a high offer.

 DHAKA, March 9 (Reuters) - Bangladesh's state grains buyer will tender this week to buy 50,000 tonnes of parboiled rice to replenish food reserves, a food official said on Tuesday. Bangladesh, the world's fourth biggest rice producer, plans to import 300,000 tonnes of rice in the current fiscal year to the end of June."We are going to issue an international tender soon to buy 50,000 tonnes of rice to shore up our stocks," said an official of the Directorate General of Food who declined to be quoted because he is not authorised to speak to the media.