Thai rice export prices hold at high levels

Thai rice export prices held at high levels this week despite recent government stock auctions, while Vietnamese prices stood steady on thin buying demand as key buyers the Philippines and China were absent, traders said on Wednesday. Thai 5-percent broken rice stood at an 18-month high of $420 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) Bangkok, against $418-$420 in the past two weeks, traders said.
"We haven't sold much. Things are the same as last week," a trader in Bangkok told Reuters. Thailand has auctioned nearly 1.7 million tonnes of rice from government stockpiles since February 16 as it has been seeking to clear the huge volume totalling of about 12 million tonnes.
Traders and analysts in Vietnam said Thai auctions did not put pressure on Vietnamese rice prices, which could jump if the Philippines and China return for fresh purchases. Vietnam's 5-percent broken rice stood unchanged in the past week at $375-$380 a tonne, FOB Saigon Port, using winter-spring grain, and at $365-$370 for summer-autumn grain.
"African buyers may be buying old-crop rice from Thailand, which is cheaper, so they are not asking for Vietnamese grain now," a trader at a foreign firm in Ho Chi Minh City said. Farmers in Vietnam's Mekong Delta have now been planting the summer-autumn rice crop with hopes their expanded area could help offset losses in the previous crop due to drought and salination.
China, the biggest buyer of Vietnamese rice, is forecast to increase its grain imports, but it has not returned to the Vietnamese market, traders said. "Rice imports will remain on an uptrend as China's production deficits is slowly expanding," BMI Research said in a report on Tuesday. China's rice imports from all origins during January-April soared 102 percent from a year earlier to 1.34 million tonnes, with Vietnamese rice jumping 85.5 percent to 580,000 tonnes, based on China's customs data.
The data covers official trade, while China has stopped buying Vietnamese rice via land border trade since late March during a crackdown on smuggling. In another development, India will soon finalise a non-basmati rice exports contract with Indonesia in a rare government deal, an Indian government official said on Monday. Indian farmers will begin planting rice in June during the rainy months for harvest starting from October.