Oct 21 - Vietnam, the world's second biggest rice exporter, will maintain annual exports at 4.5 million tonnes for the next few years despite increasing production, a senior agriculture official said on Tuesday.
Vietnam's annual rice output is forecast to rise 7.2 percent in 2009 to 38.6 million tonnes, but the government has no plans to raise its export target as it wants to build up food stocks, Pham Van Du, deputy director general of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said.
"Sure, we plan to produce more, but we don't want to export that much," Du told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a global rice seminar in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
"We plan to sell around 4.5 million tonnes per year until 2010 or maybe until 2015," he added.
He said the government was looking at building up rice stockpiles to ensure it had ample supplies amid fears of changing weather patterns, with several storms since early this year damaging food crops.
Du declined to give details on how high the rice stocks might go, simply saying that it should be higher than the current 1.5 million tonnes.
Vietnam's stocks were well below those of Thailand, believed to be 4.3 million tonnes, he said.
"It's about the unpredictable weather we face every year. We should have some policy on food security as we are concerned that there could be more storms in the future," he said.
The Southeast Asian country is hit by up to 10 big storms or typhoons a year. It has seen eight storms so far this year.
"We have a huge population to take care of. There are people who depend a lot on rice," Du said.
The country has a population of 82 million.
Vietnam was keen to sell rice during the final quarter of 2008 when the smallest crop is due to be harvested, Du said.
This third crop was not affected by storms, he said, so Vietnam is expected to double its rice exports in the last three months of the year compared with a year ago to 1 million tonnes to meet the full-year export target of 4.5 million tonnes.
Vietnam was expected to have around 1.8 million tonnes of rice from the third crop, which is due to be harvested in November, unchanged from last year, Du said.
Harvesting of the next main crop is in February.