Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (Reap) has expressed concern over the late sowing of non-basmati rice varieties due to water shortage. Rafique Suleman, Senior Vice Chairman, REAP has drawn the attention of Syed Murad Ali Shah, Chief Minister of Sindh to the prevailing serious condition of rice trade and export sector.
He said in Sindh, non-basmati varieties including Irri-6, Irr-9, KS-282, etc, have been sown very late. As per information received from Dadu, Larkana and other important rice growing areas, these areas are fed with three canals namely Rice Canal, Dadu Canal & Keerthar Canal once in a year and farmers waits for this water keenly.
Although every year there is some delay of 10-15 days but this year we observed too much delay. However, this year they are provided the water with the delay of 30-45 days, he maintained. "We are afraid that due this reason, rice crop will arrive very late and farmers may suffer huge losses because of over one month delay," he said and urged that Chief Minister Sindh to take notice of this delay and ensure timely water supply.
With late sowing rice crop will be available late for export purpose and will cause delay in catering export orders which may hurt the image of rice exporters as well as our country, he said. "We cannot get the good prices of our rice and we have to face difficulties in achieving our annual targets due to late arrival of rice crop," he added.
Rafique said that there are reports that rice sowing is bans in some areas of Sindh. The matter should be investigated on priority basis, he demanded. "It has also observed that quantity of moisture & chalky in rice is exceeding their normal limits and we had to run our rice processing plants for extra hours, whereas we are already facing energy crisis," he said. He requested the concerned ministries to review the processing methods of rice and government should provide soft Islamic loans for purchase of latest rice plants, so that exporters can make value addition in rice and get better prices of our rice.
He said that Reap has already requested the State Bank of Pakistan for Long Term Finance on Islamic banking for the storage of rice and we are still waiting for the approval of the same. This scheme will attract the attention of rice exporters and they will get advantage of this scheme.
During a recent meeting at TDAP, Reap has also requested Government of Pakistan to install a Dryer on experimental basis funded by Government in any one or two rice mills proposed, so that after the success of this pilot project, more rice farmers will be able to get this facility on their rice processing area and government extend them soft Islamic loans for the installation of Dryer, Rafique said.
He complained that both the rice research institutes, ie, Kala Shah Kaku (Punjab) and Dokri (Sindh) are not doing Research and development work in rice seeds, of which since last 10-15 years no new rice seed has been introduced by these research institute. In order to increase domestic rice production exporters are importing good quality Chinese hybrid rice seeds which have better results and more yields, he said.