Coming in the midst of apparent predicament of Pakistani rice exporters, it is disconcerting to learn from a Recorder Report that they missed an opportunity to export rice worth $300 million recently within the course of five days due to non- participation in three different tenders of 0.750 million tons, because of its comparatively higher prices in the domestic market.
Quoting trade sources, it has revealed that Pakistani rice was offered higher by $29 to $55 per ton compared to the others. For one, the opportunity was lost in respect of export of 0.5 million tons rice to Philippines on this count. Similar was the case with regard to the prospects of export of 175,000 tons rice to Iraq and 75,000 tons rice to Mauritius for the same reason.
While blaming the severe setback on the intervention of the government institutions, namely, TCP and PASSCO, in rice trade for the abrupt spurt in prices in the domestic market, the exporters did not dispute the fact that Thailand and Vietnam are the major competitors offering much lower prices in the international market, and hence, their exporters grabbed the opportunity to export that much rice at our cost, to three different countries just in a five-day binge.
Seemingly, disillusioned by the grim prospects for Pakistan's rice export, the exporters made a pointed reference to the increase of 30 percent in the price of coarse rice too in the local market, thus further aggravating the looming threat to Pakistan's rice exports, in boosting which the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (Reap) had played no small a role. More to this, it will be noted that the situation as now developing has not caught them unawares either.
For, ahead of the report regarding the Indian rice farmers' and exporters' bid for withdrawal of $200 per ton export duty on Basmati rice imposed last year, and lifting the ban on export of non-Basmati rice, they had warned of the Indian move.
This was why the Reap Chairman argued that Pakistani exporters would be unable to compete in the international market due to the ensuing huge price difference. Much earlier, the Reap had in a comprehensive letter to Prime Minister Gilani, had urged to stop PASSCO and TCP from purchasing rice, recalling that consequent upon privatisation of rice export in 1989, the private sector had boosted rice exports from $300 million to more than $2 billion in last fiscal year.
Significantly, its primary thrust was on assignment of export of rice to the private sector through it, as a fully representative body of the rice exporters, after abolition of RECP, which was until then the country's sole rice procurement agency, with PASSCO left to buy it in very small quantities. As earlier pointed out in these columns, Reap had worked out an elaborate and ambitious plan for the export of surplus 4 million tons out of 6.5 million tons of current crop rice after taking out 2.5 million tons for domestic needs.
However, for this, it had laid certain enabling pre-conditions which the government would do well thoroughly to discuss in a meeting with its representatives. Responding to it positively, the meeting, though scheduled earlier, is reported to have been twice postponed. In the situation as now unfolding it will be in the fitness of things to thrash out the whole matter without any further delay.