PetroVietnam Fertilizer & Chemical Joint-Stock Co., (HOSE: DPM) Vietnam’s biggest fertilizer producer, said pretax profit fell 37 percent to VND1 trillion (US$56 million) in the nine months to the end of September.

The audited pretax profit figure for the period already met 97 percent of its full-year forecast, the Ho Chi Minh City-based company said in an e-mailed statement Monday. Sales totaled VND5.2 trillion, 89 percent of the whole-year target.

Pretax profit in 2009 will be about 23 percent higher than the company’s previous full-year target as demand for fertilizer increases for the autumn-winter rice crop in the fourth quarter, it said in the statement.

PetroVietnam Fertilizer will meet increasing demand by raising annual capacity at its Phu My Fertilizer plant to 800,000 metric tons and building another plant with a capacity of 400,000 metric tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, or NPK, fertilizer a year, Nguyen Xuan Thang, PetroVietnam Fertilizer’s chairman, said in the statement.