Vietnamese firms have recently won a bid to sell 17,050 tons of rice to Japan, according to a local trade agency on Thursday.

The commodity has been priced, on average, nearly 459.20 U.S. dollars per ton, said the Trade Information Center under the Trade Ministry.

Local companies have so far this year won bids of selling a total of 45,050 tons of rice to Japan, compared with 120,000 tons in 2006, and 80,000 tons in 2005, said the center.

Vietnam exported 316,000 tons of rice worth 100 million dollars to the world market, mainly to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cuba and Japan, in the first two months of this year, posting respective year-on-year declines of 47.8 percent and 39.9 percent.

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 exported over 4.7 million tons of rice worth 1.3 billion dollars last year, seeing respective decreases of 4.5 percent and 7.2 percent against the previous year, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

Source: Xinhua