Bangkok (VNA) – Thailand’s rice exports in thefirst six months of this year surged 56.6% to 3.5 million tonnes, bringing in 60.93billion THB (about 1.7 billion USD) in revenue, or 42.9% more year on year.

Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Chalermchai Sree-onsaid this is good news for Thai farmers, and this increase in export will helpboost the price of rice in the country.

Thailand should be able to beat Vietnam and become theworld’s second-largest rice exporter if it can ship more than 7 milliontonnes of rice this year, he noted.

According to statistics of the Thai Rice Exporters Association and CustomsDepartment (TREA), Thailand exported 764,131 tonnes of rice worth 13.12billion THB in June alone, up 69.4% and 57.1%, respectively, compared to450,973 tonnes worth 8.35 billion THB in May.

Chalermchai expected rice exports of Australia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Europe, Paraguay,Uruguay and Thailand to rise, and rice shipments from Colombia,Ecuador, India, Iraq, Madagascar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, the US andVietnam to drop.

However, he said many factors may affect Thailand’srice exports in the second half of the year, such as the value of the baht, theproductivity of key rice exporters, the Russia-Ukraine war’s impact onproduction costs and the COVID-19 economic fallout.

Vietnam exported 2.77 million tonnes of rice worth 1.35billion USD in the first five months of this year, up 6.95% and 4.26% year onyear, respectively.

TREA forecast that Thailand will ship at least 8 milliontonnes of rice abroad in 2022, far higher than the plan of 7 million tonnes. Thevolume will generate an revenue of 130 billion THB, compared to 110 billion THB last year./.