While China has traditionally been the main market for Vietnam’s rice exports, retail outlets across that country fail to sell the Vietnamese produce, an official said on Monday.

Although over half of its rice exports were to China last year, it remains a highly competitive market amongst other rice exporters, namely Thailand, Pakistan, and Cambodia, said Bui Huy Hoang, Vietnam’s commercial counselor in China.

The produce is nowhere to be seen in supermarkets or other retailers in China, Hoang said in a conference about the rice market development organized by the Vietnamese Ministry of Trade and Industry in Ho Chi Minh City.

In the meantime, Vietnam’s rice export competitors like Thailand, Pakistan, and Cambodia have gradually improved their standings in the Chinese market thanks to a high quality product.

“We should improve the quality of our rice to regain our standing in China; otherwise Cambodia will pass us sooner or later,” Hoang noted.

The amount of rice for export could hover at about 6.5 million metric tons for 2016, Huynh The Nang, chairman of the Vietnam Food Administration (VFA), said on January 14.

In the Jan-Oct period, the country’s rice export reached 5.03 million metric tons, according to the VFA.

In the last two months of 2015, 1.5 million metric tons of rice was exported, which took total rice exports to 6.7 million metric tons for the year, according to the VFA

This represented a three percent decline in total rice export value compared to that of 2014, the organization noted.

Vietnam has recently yielded huge profits from exporting its ‘herbal variety,’ which offers a high nutrition content, to the European market, fetching up to US$800 per metric ton.

Although the Southeast Asian country has joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, many Vietnamese experts are skeptical about the economic potential of exporting rice as it could become uncompetitive when pitted against other countries.

Despite Vietnam being among the world’s top rice exporters, many local consumers in southern markets now prefer several types of Cambodian rice to the domestically grown produce.

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