HANOI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development says the country should maintain rice acreage at 3.9 million hectares upwards from now to 2020 to ensure national food security, Vietnam News Agency reported Tuesday.

    Although Vietnam's paddy rice productivity increased by an average 2.06 percent or 77,000 tons a year in the 1997-2006 period, the country's annual paddy rice output remained at approximately 36 million tons due to shrinking rice-growing areas as a result of the establishment of industrial zones and urban areas nationwide, especially in the Red River and Mekong deltas, its biggest rice baskets.

    The ministry predicts that Vietnam's annual paddy rice output will reach 37.58 million tons in 2010, 38.75 million tons in 2015 and 39.63 million tons in 2020. Domestic paddy rice consumption is forecast to rise to 33.2 million tons in 2020 from 27.6 million tons in 2007.

    By the end of 2006, Vietnam had a total rice-growing area of 4.13 million hectares, the ministry said.

    Vietnam, the world's second biggest rice exporter after Thailand, exported over 2.1 million tons of rice worth nearly 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months of this year, seeing respective year-on-year surges of 12.9 percent and 94.1 percent, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

    Vietnam reaped 1.5 billion dollars from selling 4.5 million tons of rice abroad, mainly to the Philippines, Malaysia, Cuba, Indonesia and Japan last year.