Vietnam is estimated to export 150, 000-170,000 tons of rice to Japan this year, up from 130,000 tons last year, according to a local industry association on Tuesday.

Vietnam will, this year, prioritize export of its rice to Japan, along with the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Cuba, the Vietnam Food Association said, noting that it shipped 80,000 tons of the commodity to Japan in 2004 and 120,000 tons in 2005.

The Vietnamese government has recently decided that the rice export volume should be 4-4.5 million tons in 2007 to ensure food security.

Vietnam is expected to post paddy rice output of some 36 million tons, including 18.2 million tons coming from the southern Mekong Delta, this year. The country's current winter-spring rice crop is estimated to yield 8.8-9 million tons, lower than that in the previous crop due to the strike of pests and diseases, the association said.

Vietnam exported over 4.7 million tons of rice worth 1.3 billion U.S. dollars last year, seeing respective decreases of 4.5 percent and 7.2 percent against the previous year.

Source: Xinhua