Brazil to make first rice export in 27 years

Brazil sold a 25,000-tonne cargo of rice for August shipment, the first rice export in 27 years, the agriculture ministry said on Tuesday.
"The buyer is an African country whose name I can't reveal," Amilton Fernando Cunha Soares, administrative director of the Rio Grande do Sul Rice Federation (Federarroz), which clinched the sale, told Reuters.
Soares said that the sale was made at $205 a tonne, FOB Rio Grande port.
"The same country asked if we could deliver another 200,000 tonnes," he said, adding that although Brazil had sufficient supplies there were logistical problems.
The agriculture ministry said in a statement that Brazil will produce 12.7 million tonnes of rice this year while domestic demand totalled 12.6 million tonnes.
Paulo Morceli, rice analyst at the government's crop supply agency Conab, said that world output will be 38.5 million tonnes lower than consumption this year and that this would favour Brazilian exports.
On Friday, Morceli told Reuters that Brazil could export 500,000 tonnes of rice annually from 2005.