VN Food Association risks losing rice monopolyFollowing recent criticism of the Vietnam Food Association (VFA), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has reduced the association’s power, with further plans to promote fairness in the rice export field. Vietnam Southern Food Corporation‘s Workers load rice pallets at Sai Gon Port, HCM City. So far, the Decree dictates that the VFA can only allocate rice export quotas under centralised contracts on the basis of agreements between Viet Nam and importing countries. As a matter of fact, Viet Nam is now only under one specialised contract to export rice to Cuba, but only one enterprise was assigned by the Government to implement this. The VEPR said that the association was hampering the development of its members via the use of monopolistic government-to-government contracts.