Vietnam's Trade Ministry has just allowed local foodstuff producers to import additional 30,000 tons of sugar, partly due to the country's thinner sugar supply.

Early last month, the ministry allowed the firms to import 57, 000 tons of sugar to make such products as cakes, candies, milk and monosodium glutamate, the Vietnam Sugarcane and Sugar Association said Tuesday.

Vietnam produced over 1 million tons of sugar during the 2004- 2005 sugarcane crop, which has just ended, down 10.7 percent against last crop, due to prolonged drought. During this crop, plants nationwide turned out 902,000 tons of sugar in addition to 180,000 tons from households.

Sugar prices in the local market currently stand at 7,500-8,000 Vietnamese dong (around 50 US cents) per kg, up some 30 percent against early this year, mainly due to the lower sugarcane output and speculation. As a result, a large volume of sugar is being smuggled into Vietnam.

Vietnam's total area under sugarcane cultivation was 287,000 hectares in the previous crop whose output stood at more than 15.5 million tons of sugarcane, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

By the end of last year, it had 42 sugar plants with a combined daily capacity of nearly 82,400 tons of sugarcane.

Source: Xinhua