Kingdom urged to maintain rice exports to rein in world price

Man Ho So, the FAO’s deputy director for the Asia-Pacific region, said the government had established a very high price for rice under its pledging project, resulting in lower exports from Thailand. The policy has moved the global price of rice upwards, so some consumers are unable to afford enough food.
The rice pledging scheme is an internal policy of Thailand in which the FAO can take no role. However, the organisation wants Thai rice export maintained so |the world price is not driven even higher.
Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO assistant director-general and regional representative for Asia and the Pacific, said the global demand for rice in 2013 would be higher, as it is a major food not only for Asia but the whole world. Africa, for instance, has been facing food shortages and has high demand for rice. This presents a great opportunity for Thailand to make use of Africa as one of the major markets for the large stockpile it has accumulated.
“Competition in the African market is not intense, as there is still high domestic demand for rice,” he said. “The income levels |of people in Africa is not high and the price of rice from Thailand is quite high. So transactions between Thailand and Africa should be based on bilateral agreements.”
Jaruk Singhapreecha, director of Thailand’s Office of Agricultural Economics, said that because of its very high price, rice from this country was not able to compete in the export market, resulting in the government being burdened with a large stockpile. However, drought this year would have a large impact on the amount of paddy coming into the market, down by about 9 per cent.
About 8 per cent of high-quality jasmine rice in the Northeast has been damaged by the drought, and that will push up its market price, Jaruk said.