Vietnamese government has decided to ban new rice export contracts despite a bumper harvest until June this year in order to ensure domestic food security.

Vietnam is the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, and growers have benefited from sharply rising world grain prices, even as domestic consumers have been hit hard by double-digit inflation.
 
World rice prices have sky-rocketed, a trend blamed on higher energy and fertilizer costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of rice farmland to bio fuel plantations, industry and cities, and on price speculation.