HANOI, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam exported over 1.3 million tons of rice worth 567 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter of this year, seeing respective year-on-year drops of 11.5 percent and 23.6 percent, according to its Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Monday.

In addition to its big rice markets such as China, the Philippines and Malaysia, Vietnam is intensifying rice export to France, the Netherlands, the United States, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique, South Korea, Japan, other members of the European Union, and other African countries.

Vietnam plans to export 6 to 7 million tons of rice this year, compared with roughly 6.1 million tons worth nearly 3.1 billion U.S. dollars last year, according to the agriculture ministry.

The country will intensify application of advanced technologies in growing paddy rice so that it can churn out 43.5 million tons of rice from 7.5 million hectares of paddy rice-growing area in 2019, said the ministry's Department of Crop Production.

As of mid-March, Vietnam had planted nearly 3.1 million hectares of winter-spring rice crop, up 0.8 percent against the same period last year. However, the winter-spring paddy rice output in its Mekong Delta is estimated at 10.8 million tons, down 37,900 tons against the previous winter-spring crop, said the department.