News · Economy
Vietnam's Agri VMA delivers 1,500 tonnes of rice grown in Cuba, its fourth batch this year
The company signed the handover with Cuba's Los Palacios on Tuesday at the San Cristóbal plant in Artemisa, and has now supplied 3,500 tonnes, according to 14ymedio and the state newspaper Granma.
Vietnamese company Agri VMA delivered 1,500 tonnes of rice of the CT16 hybrid variety to Cuba, grown, harvested and processed on the island. The handover was signed by Nguyen Thi Thom, director of Agri VMA, and Michel Ballate Camejo, general director of the Los Palacios Grain Agro-Industrial Company, at the rice plant in San Cristóbal, Artemisa. It is the fourth batch this year under the agreement between the two countries' agriculture ministries.
Of the total, 1,020 tonnes were processed at the San Cristóbal plant and another 480 had already been distributed in Sancti Spíritus and Granma, according to 14ymedio. The company has now supplied 3,500 tonnes to the Cuban side.
Since starting its agreement with the Cuban state in February 2023 and launching its first experimental plantings in late 2024, Agri VMA has expanded its crops from 1,000 to more than 2,500 hectares in Pinar del Río, Granma, Sancti Spíritus and Villa Clara. The CT16 variety yields more than seven tonnes of fresh paddy rice per hectare.
In 2025 Cuba produced 111,000 tonnes of rice, against 304,000 in 2018, according to 14ymedio. That is an improvement on the 80,000 tonnes of the previous year, but far short of the 700,000 the country needs each year to cover its consumption.
Agri VMA was the first foreign company to receive state land to farm in Cuba since 1959, with an initial transfer of 308 hectares between late 2024 and January 2025, and it is authorised to hire Cuban workers directly without going through a state employment agency. Rice cooperation with Vietnam began in 2002, and Vietnamese technicians abandoned the La Sierpe project in Sancti Spíritus in 2022 after years of fuel problems, red tape and unpaid bills.
Sources: 14ymedio · Granma
Data updated: 2026-11-11T16:15:00.000Z