Despite being the world's second largest rice exporter, Vietnam mostly sold its rice in low-end markets and still does not have a national brand like other countries. In China, Vietnam's largest rice export market, the market share of high-quality rice does not belong to Vietnamese but Thai exporters. This is a disadvantage for the rice export sector and rice farmers. Efforts to build Vietnamese rice brand are being promoted by several enterprises. However, this issue will require a lot of time and effort to tackle.
In the Beijing Agro-product Wholesale Market in China, besides the local rice, the stores also sell 2 and 5 kilo bags of Thai rice. Because of their local specialty rice brands, the price of the Thai brands is usually 1.5 times higher than the Chinese specialty rice. In fact, most Vietnamese rice exported to China has no brand at all, so people are unaware of it.
Recently, a Vietnamese enterprise has started joining Chinese firms in setting up a joint-venture in producing and trading agricultural products, researching hybrid rice, and contributing to setting the trend of building the Vietnamese rice brand in the Chinese market.
The biggest barrier to building a Vietnamese rice brand is that the country has too many rice varieties. Many experts say that the demand for rice per capita in the Asian region is seeing sharp declines, especially in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. In the near future, traditional Vietnamese rice markets will have their own direction. China will diversify its rice imports, as the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia move towards being self-sufficient. This is why Vietnamese rice should have better rice quality and increased value. This will allow the industry to develop sustainably and contribute to building the national rice brand.
