* Vietnam's parboiled rice may meet 10 pct of global demand
* Thailand to lose more market share
* Bangladesh says buying from Thailand, Vietnam (Adds Bangladesh deals)
By Ho Binh Minh
HANOI, March 25 (Reuters) - Vietnam aims to export 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes of parboiled rice this year, which could help meet up to 10 percent of annual global demand for the variety and hasten the pace of seizing market share from top exporter Thailand.
The 5 percent broken parboiled rice was being sold at $490 a tonne, above the $440-$450 for its 5 percent broken-rice grade, bringing benefit to exporters and farmers, state-run Vietnam Agriculture newspaper quoted industry officials as saying on Friday.
Thai exporters were concerned as only parboiled rice can now help support overall Thai rice exports because the nation has already lost market share of white rice and fragrant rice sales to Vietnam due to their high prices.
"We may not feel the heat at this moment, but I think in the longer term we could lose more market share to Vietnam," said Chookiat Ophaswonges, honorary president of Thai Rice Exporters Association.
At least a third of the targeted parboiled rice exports this year could go to Bangladesh, which said on Friday it will buy 100,000 tonnes of the variety from Vietnam under a 200,000-tonne government deal to be signed next week.
Bangladesh has also inked a deal to import 200,000 tonnes of parboiled rice from Thailand at $580 a tonne, including cost and freight, in its first government-to-government deal to secure ample supplies of the staple.
Last year's shipments of parboiled rice from Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter, were not immediately available, but traders said the volume was very small for the rice variety that is still at a start-up phase in the country.
Q1 RICE EXPORTS UP
Vietnam's overall rice exports between January and March will rise 17 percent from the same period last year to an estimated 1.69 million tonnes, the government said.
"This year Vietnam is quickening parboiled rice sales, while in the past there was only one plant supplying the rice in the Mekong Delta," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said.
From late 2010 several domestic companies began building plants in the Mekong Delta to process parboiled rice and started shipping this year.
They have exported more than 10,000 tonnes of parboiled rice as of March 23, from 1,000 tonnes in the first 40 days of 2011, Director Tran Ngoc Trung of Vinh Phat Investment Corp was quoted by the newspaper, run by the Agriculture Ministry, as saying.
Vinh Phat planned to export 60,000 tonnes of parboiled rice this year, Trung added.
The Ho Chi Minh City-based private firm has emerged this year as Vietnam's top exporter of parboiled rice. Buyers of parboiled rice -- a half-cooked variety that came to the market a few decades ago to meet demand from Africa -- included countries in Asia, the Middle East, Canada and Cuba, it said on its web site (vinhphat.com).
Higher output will offer more relief to consumers of rice, which has so far held well under the peaks of the 2008 food crisis and below most other grains, amid fears over rising food costs that have prompted rate hikes in most Asian countries seeking to manage inflation.
THAILAND'S MARKET SHARE AT RISK
Vietnam's rising parboiled rice exports did not surprise Thai exporters as they realised for a couple of years that Vietnam will develop its technology to produce parboiled rice.
They said Thailand, currently the biggest exporter of parboiled rice after India banned its rice exports, will lose greater market share to Vietnam.
"I'm serious that we could no longer be the world's top exporter over the next 10 years if we let things go on like this," a Thai exporter said. "We used to be happy selling premium-grade fragrant rice, but now it's not only us and our market share is eroded."
Traders in Thailand had said they were unlikely to supply a big portion of the Philippines' rice needs in 2011 as Thai prices were well above those in Vietnam.
Traditional buyers of Thai fragrant rice, with premium grade of $920 a tonne, are now switching to Vietnam which offered the variety at around $600 a tonne, traders said. (Additional reporting by Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat in BANGKOK and Ruma Paul in DHAKA; Editing by Ramthan Hussain)