Yangon  - Myanmar exported 670,000 tons of rice in the fiscal year that ended March 31 despite the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis and expected to export up to 1 million tons this fiscal year, media reports said Sunday.

"The export volume of rice is expected to increase this year, maybe reaching a million metric tons by the end of the 2009-2010 financial year," an official from the Myanmar Rice and Paddy Association told the English-language Myanmar Times.

As of the end of September, rice exports amounted to more than 500,000 metric tons.

In the past fiscal year, rice exports earned the country 200.6 million dollars, almost double the 102.55 million earned off rice exports the year before, the Times reported.

Cyclone Nargis hit the Irrawaddy Delta, the country's traditional rice bowl, in May 2008, destroying much of the rice paddy under cultivation and leaving more than 40,000 people dead or missing. Despite the storm, Myanmar exported 670,000 metric tons of rice that fiscal year, according to Commerce Ministry statistics,

While Myanmar's rice exports are on the rise this year, prices are down.

Myanmar rice was selling at 310 dollars a ton on the export market last month, compared with 380 dollars per ton in October 2008, according to a survey conducted by the Economic Studies and Research Institute.

The price fall is in tandem with declining world prices for the commodity, institute researcher Maung Aung said.

Myanmar was the world's largest rice exporter before the country opted for socialism in 1962 after strongman General Ne Win overthrew the elected civilian government of Prime Minister U Nu.

Thailand has thereafter claimed the top slot. This year, Thailand expects to export about 10 million tons of rice, followed by Vietnam with 6 million.

Myanmar rice is deemed poor quality compared with Thailand's and fetches considerably lower prices on the world market.

Of Myanmar's rice exports in the past fiscal year, about 85 per cent went to Bangladesh, South Africa and Ivory Coast.

"Africa has become a major market for Myanmar rice exporters during recent years," Maung Aung said.

According to statistics provided by the Myanmar Rice and Paddy Traders' Association, Myanmar enjoyed a rice surplus of 3.24 million tons out of 15 million tons of rice produced in the past fiscal year.

Domestic rice consumption among its 56 million people is about 12 million tons a year.(dpa)