HANOI (Xinhua): The Vietnamese government has urged relevant sectors and enterprises to intensify purchase of rice grown in the southern Mekong Delta and delivery of rice for export, and sign new contracts so that 4.5-4.6 million tons of the commodity would be shipped abroad this year, according to Vietnam' s newspaper Youth on Friday.

During a meeting on facilitating summer-autumn rice purchase in the delta, Vietnam's biggest rice basket, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked the Northern Food Corporation and the Southern Food Corporation to buy 400,000-500,000 tons of rice in August, and all rice exporters to complete the delivery, by September, of 3.6 million tons of rice under export contracts already signed and then try to ink new ones.

The prime minister decided not to impose export taxes on contracts exporting rice at FOB (free on board) rates of less than 800 U.S. dollars per ton.

Dung required the State Bank of Vietnam, the country's central bank, to ask commercial banks to provide rice enterprises with sufficient loans, and consider the possibility of extending existing debts owed by farmers and keeping on lending them for continued rice production. He asked relevant agencies and firms to ensure that rice growers would make a profit of at least 40 percent.

The Vietnam Food Association and local rice exporters said the current decreasing world rice price is temporary because the global demand for the commodity will surge in late 2008. Major exporters are advised to increase paddy rice storage capacity.

Vietnam exported roughly 2.8 million tons of rice totaling 1.8 billion dollars in the first seven months of this year, down 6.8 percent in volume but up 87.6 percent in value against the same period last year, according to the country's General Statistics Office. It sold overseas 4.5 million tons of rice worth nearly 1.5 billion dollars in 2007, down 3.1 percent in volume but up 13.9 percent in value against 2006.