Priced out of the rice market
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Earlier today I looked into rice pricing. The Philippines is buying rice from Vietnam, not Thailand. The Vietnamese 5 per cent rice is about US$200 (about Bt5,900) less expensive than Thai rice.
This disparity in price is caused by the increase in the baht’s value and the government’s rice-price pledging scheme. I also compared the Thai pricing with India and Pakistan, which are also cheaper than Thailand.
Under further investigation I found the following data from Cambodia:
Cambodia shipped 118,504 tonnes of rice from January to April, up 130 per cent from last year; Thailand remains a large importer.
Why is Thailand importing such large quantities of Cambodian rice when it has an excess stock on hand?
Tom
Bangkok
