In the first week of May, Vietnamese businesses shipped 132,409 tonnes of rice, earning US$59.1 million.

The VFA vice chairman Pham Van Bay said that the total amount of rice under contracts sighed by the end of April reached 4 million tonnes, up 13 percent from a year earlier.

Mr Bay added that there is no reason for some businesses to complain that they are suffering from losses due to low export prices and high domestic prices. Over the past four months, export prices have been gradually falling but they already signed their export contracts, Mr Bay said.