Vietnam: Long An Food expects Vietnam’s 2008 cashew harvest to drop 23 pct

Long An Food Processing Joint-Stock Company, Vietnam’s biggest publicly traded cashew processor and exporter, said it expects the country’s harvest to drop 23 percent this year. The stock fell for the first time in 10 days. Vietnam’s cashew harvest will decline to 270,000 tons this year from 350,000 tons in 2007, said Le Huu Phuong, deputy general director in charge of finance at Long An Food. The stock slipped VND500, or 1.9 percent, to VND26,000 in Hanoi."The country will have a bad harvest due to the weather", Phuong said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Long An, a province in southern Vietnam. "We have some difficulties, but we foresaw the situation and signed up contracts to buy cashew nuts from African countries." The company needs to source for cashews to boost its earnings. The Long An-based company expects pretax profit to rise 14 percent to VND25 billion (US$1.6 million) in 2008 from VND22 billion last year, Phuong said.Source: thanhniennews.com