HANOI: Vietnam has revised up its annual rice export target by around two percent, aiming to ship up to 4.6 million tonnes of rice this year in an attempt to arrest falling domestic prices, the government said.

The upward revision of the annual target would mean Vietnam could ship slightly more than the 4.5 million tonnes exported last year when it was the world’s third-largest exporter of the grain after Thailand and India.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked exporters to speed up loading this month and in September and “quickly negotiate and sign new contracts at good prices with an export volume for the whole of 2008 at 4.5-4.6 million tonnes”, the government said in a statement seen by Reuters. Dung has also decided not to tax rice exports immediately if the grain is sold at less than $800 a tonne, free-on-board basis, the statement said without saying when the tax could be in place.

The government said in July it would impose export duties on rice, forcing exporters to pay tax of up to $176 for each tonne of the exportable grain. The tax for rice sold at less than $800 a tonne would be 600,000 dong ($36.4), it said.

Dung ordered Vinafood 1 and Vinafood 2, the country’s two largest rice exporters, to buy 400,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes of the grain within this month on top of the volume already in stock for their loading as contracted.

The government said Vietnam has signed contracts to export 3.6 million tonnes in the first nine months of this year, or 100,000 tonnes above its initial shipment target for the nine-month period.

The government’s move came after the Vietnam Food Association sought approval to drop a rice export tax that could hit farmers while prices have been falling. As the summer-autumn rice harvest has been peaking in the Mekong Delta, paddy prices have fallen by more than nine percent from early July to 4,600-4,700 dong per kg this week. reuters