Hanoi, Aug 20 - Vietnam is forecast to refine 1.25 million tonnes of sugar in its upcoming 2008/2009 crushing season due to start from October, unchanged from the previous season despite a drop in sugarcane area.
The total sugarcane acreage in Vietnam, a small producer of the commodity, is expected to drop 5.4 percent to 290,000 hectares (716,600 acres), the Agriculture Ministry-controlled Information Centre said in a report on Wednesday.
The report gave no reason for the decline in sugarcane area.
The report quoted the Ministry's figures as showing Vietnam refined 1.25 million tonnes of sugar in the 2007/2008 season, and also imported 58,000 tonnes as committed under annual purchases after it joined the World Trade Organisation in January 2007.
Domestic output nearly met consumption, it said.
Vietnam's sugarcane crushing season lasts from October to June, and cheaper Thai sugar has often been smuggled in via Cambodia between July and September, partly enabled by seasonal floods which have now been rising in the Mekong Delta.
The domestic output plus smuggled sugar help meet the demand of domestic confectionery makers in making mooncakes, a traditional product around the mid-autumn festival in late August or September.
Vietnam's 40 sugar refineries have projected their 2008 revenues to rise 6.3 percent from 2007 to a combined 11 trillion dong ($667 million), of which sugar sales would advance 7 percent to 9.2 trillion dong, the report said but gave no profit figures.
They refined 832,100 tonnes of sugar between January and July, up 3.9 percent from the same period last year, the government's General Statistics Office said. ($1=16,498 dong)