RE: Rice export

[Hai-Tri Le <haitril@microsoft.com>]

Hi, anh Lam

Until VietNam gets Most Favored Nation status, I think this is an
unprofitable idea.

Right now, you can go through rice traders in Thailand, Malaysia or
Singapore to buy Vietnamese rice without coming into contacts with any
Vietnamese agency, but that is one more middleman. If you want to
eliminate this middleman, I don't think you will have any problems
buying rice directly from Vietnamese companies with export quota.

The problem is that without Most Favored Nation status, which targets
country of origin, you can't compete with rice from Thailand on price.

I, too, would stop buying Thai rice the moment Vietnam rice arrives on
the market. I don't even mind paying higher prices for VietNam rice. Too
bad business people don't feel the same.

Ti`nh tha^n,
HL

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Phan Thanh Lam [SMTP:phtl@freenet.tlh.fl.us]
> Sent:	Friday, May 02, 1997 6:41 AM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	Re: Rice export
> 
> 
> Anh Tuan, anh AiViet and other VNSA members,
> 
> Wouldn't it be nice if Vietnamese living overseas got to eat rice from
> VN 
> instead of Thailand and that Vietnamese farmers can sell their rice at
> 
> higher price?
> 
> Assume that I can take care of getting Vietnam 
> rice to the proper wholesalers here in the U.S. and have an adequate 
> marketing and distribution system to get the consumers to buy rice
> from 
> VN with competitive price,  could you all give me some advices, 
> ideas, suggestions on the best way to approach the Vietnamese side.
> WHat 
> are some of the problems that must be overcome? WHat sort of
> investments 
> would be required to upgrade old equipment?
> 
> I'd like to assess this potential and would appreciate any ideas you
> may 
> have, realistic or not, practical or not.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Lam  
> 
> On Thu, 1 May 1997, Tuan V Nguyen wrote:
> 
> > a lower price than the governmental sector. However, the 
> > private sector has problem in exporting rice. When people 
> > try to sell their rice to governmental agencies, they have 
> > to go through a very cumbersome procedure (sound familiar?) 
> 
> > rice export, I think we have a long way to go to compete 
> > head-to-head with neighbour country like Thailand. Our 
> > problem is that our rice is not that of high quality. So 
> ...
> > outdated. Consequently, our processed rice is not clean 
> > enough, immature and low quality. To compete with Thai in 
> > this market, we must improve our quality and pricing 
> > system.