Vietnam has eyed to produce 1 million tons of high-quality paddy rice in 7 southern localities in late 2006 and early 2007, local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times reported Friday.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has proposed each of the 7 localities of Dong Thap, An Giang, Tien Giang, Long An, Soc Trang, Kien Giang and Can Tho in the Mekong delta set aside some 30,000 hectares of land for growing high-quality rice in the winter-spring crop, ensuring that they would export 500,000 tons of the commodity in 2007.

Vietnam, the world's second biggest rice exporter after Thailand, is intensifying research on high-quality rice strains, since its current rice varieties often churn out rice seeds with moderate length, and unstable purity and quality. The Mekong Delta is the country's rice hub.

According to Vietnam's General Statistics Office, local companies, which have already signed contracts on exporting 3.5 million tons of rice in 2006, delivered over 1.7 million tons of the commodity worth 466 million U.S. dollars in the first four months of this year, down 7.5 percent and 9 percent respectively.

The Vietnamese government has recently decided to export 5 million tons of rice at most in 2006, a move to ensure the country 's food security. Vietnam, which shipped abroad more than 5.2 million tons of rice worth nearly 1.4 billion dollars in 2005, plans to produce 38-39 million tons of paddy rice of all kinds in 2006.

Source: Xinhua