The Vietnam Food Association's members said they planned to buy 400,000 tons of rice in August to stabilize domestic rice price, local newspaper the Young People reported Tuesday. The move is to deal with declining rice price in the country, said Nguyen Tho Tri, Vice Chairman of the association.

The association's members will buy rice with the price of 3,800Vietnamese dong (21 U.S. cents) a kilogram. This price allows local producers to have profits of at least 30 percent, said Tri.

The move is included in the association's plan to buy two million tons of rice this year to serve export, according to local newspaper the Labor.

According to the association, local companies had contracts to export 5.39 million tons of rice during the first seven months of this year. Of the total, the country has shipped 4.1 million tons.

Vietnam's export turnover of rice reached 1.68 billion U.S. dollars in the first seven months, an increase of 8.54 percent year-on-year, said the newspaper.