Vietnam's government may place a rice export cap of 4.5 million tons in 2005 to ensure food security amidst consequences of Typhoon Damrey, a local agriculture official told Xinhua Tuesday.

"Our ministry'll propose the government instruct rice enterprises to stop signing new export contracts. We should export a total of 4.5 million tons of rice this year to ensure food security," the official from the Planning Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said, declining to be named.

"Typhoon Damrey had considerable impact on agricultural production in the northern region," the official said, noting that Vietnam is estimated to harvest more than 36.3 million tons of paddy rice from over 7.3 million hectares this year, posting a 0.5 percent rise in output over last year.

Damrey, the biggest typhoon in Vietnam over the past nine years, hitting the country's central and northern region last week, has killed or left missing a total of 69 local people, injured 28 others.

It also damaged properties, including over 318,000 hectares of rice and subsidiary crops, with total losses of some 3,509 billion Vietnamese dong (222 million US dollars), according to the latest figure released by the Central Steering Committee on Storm and Flood Prevention.

Vietnam exported nearly 4.4 million tons of rice worth roughly 1.2 billion dollars in the first nine months of this year, achieving year-on-year surges of 32.6 percent and 52.5 percent, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

The country, the world's second biggest rice exporter after Thailand, shipped abroad slightly more than 4 million tons of rice last year, mainly to the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and the Middle East.

Source: Xinhua