New Delhi: India, the world's second-largest rice producer, may ship two million metric tonnes before March as African buyers seek cheaper alternatives to supplies from flood-hit Thailand, according to KRBL Ltd., an exporter.
"Today the cheapest rice is available in India, and that is why there is a lot of demand," Anil Kumar Mittal, chairman of the New Delhi-based exporter, said in a phone interview on Monday. Indian supplies of white rice are at least $135 (Dh495) a ton cheaper than those from Thailand, the biggest exporter, he said.
Rising supplies from India may ease rice prices in Chicago, which have climbed 20 per cent in the past year, and cap global food costs monitored by the United Nations that increased 16 per cent in September from a year earlier.
Contracts
Rice is the best-performing grain this year on concern that damage to crops from the worst floods in Thailand in 50 years and dry weather in Texas in the US will shrink global supplies.
Indian exporters have signed contracts to ship about 800,000 tonnes of the grain after the government scrapped restrictions on exports last month, Prem Garg, managing director of Shri Lal Mahal Ltd., an exporter, said by phone yesterday. Buyers from African countries were signing deals to import Indian rice at prices ranging from $350 a ton and $500 a ton, free-on-board basis, he said.
India, which banned private companies from shipping non-basmati rice in April 2008 amid a global food crisis, partly lifted that restriction in July. Exports may total four million tonnes in the year that began on April 1, Vijay Setia, president of the All-India Rice Exporters Association, said.
Thailand's Permanent Secretary for Commerce Yanyong Phuangrach said last week that the flooding will have a limited impact on rice shipments.
Tropical storms have flooded 62 of Thailand's 77 provinces, damaging 8.4 million rai (1.3 million hectares), or 14 per cent of rice land, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said yesterday.
