Rice prices in the world's top three rice exporters remained largely unchanged this week with Thai and Vietnam prices widening amid slow sales while Indian prices edged down on low demand, traders said on Wednesday. Vietnam's rice sales have not picked up and prices were almost stable this week even after the country won a tender to supply 150,000 tonnes to the Philippines, traders said.
Even the news on private traders planning to import rice from Vietnam or Thailand has not moved the market, they added. "Philippine (private) traders will buy rice at very competitive prices so they must choose carefully," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. The grain to be imported by February 28, 2017 is subject to a 35 percent tariff.
Indicative quotations of Vietnam's 25-percent broken rice, often sold to the Philippines, stood at $330-$332 a tonne, FOB basis, narrowing from $330-$335 last Wednesday. The prices last week were the lowest in nearly seven months. The -percent broken rice widened to $340-$350 a tonne, FOB basis, from $340-$345 a week ago due to the scarcity of broken rice, traders said. Situation was not better in Thai with quiet market due to no fresh demand, traders in Bangkok said.
Thai benchmark 5-percent broken rice widened to $370-$376 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) basis, from $375-$376 last week, traders said. Thailand expects to harvest 23.55 million tonnes of rice between October to December this year, the country's rice committee said on Wednesday. As a result, Thailand will temporarily stop holding state rice auctions to avoid oversupply in the market ahead of the annual crop harvest, the government said. No definite date was given as to when the auctions would resume.
Thailand's state-owned Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) and rice millers will also buy some 10 million tonnes at market prices out of the 23.55 million tonnes in order to take it off the market for three to four months. "These measures will help stop market prices from dropping," a trader based in Bangkok said. Meanwhile, in India, the world's biggest rice exporter, five-percent broken parboiled rice prices eased by $2 per tonne this week to $370 to $380 per tonne due to sluggish demand as buyers were purchasing more from Thailand and Vietnam.
"Demand is very weak. Buyers are switching to Thailand, which is offering rice at competitive price," said M. Adishankar, executive director at Sri Lalitha, a leading rice exporter based in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. As on September 9, Indian farmers have cultivated rice on 38 million hectares, slightly higher than 37 million hectares during the same period a year ago.
"Prices are also coming under pressure due to an expected rise in the production. Since weather is favourable, traders are expecting a bumper crop," said another exporter based in Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. India mainly exports non-basmati rice to African countries and premier basmati rice to Middle East. The country's non basmati rice exports in April to June, the first three months of its fiscal year, rose 2.3 percent from a year ago to 1.74 million tonnes. India is planning to buy 33 million tonnes of summer-sown rice from farmers in the 2016/17 season for its food welfare programmes and meet emergency needs.