This would help to facilitate the achievement of Viet Nam’s ambitious goals on both trade and food security. The current system creates a conflict between the objectives of improving the market orientation of the sector and ensuring food security. It limits competition, creates market uncertainty and reduces the incentive to develop long-term marketing arrangements. The result is a continued focus on supplying low-quality rice. The failure of the system to prevent the transmission of rising world prices onto the domestic market in 2008 suggests that the rational for maintaining the policy in place is not sound.