Foreign markets: Pakistan shows interest in rice export

MANILA: Pakistan, India and Cambodia are interested in supplying Philippines with additional rice volume the country might need for food security purposes.

“These are just preliminary discussions. We got assurance that whenever we want to go to the market, they are more than willing to provide us the volume we need,” said Philippines National Food Authority (NFA) Head Angelito Banayo on Tuesday. He did not specify the stage of talks with India and Pakistan. Philippines will import 860,000 metric tons rice this year, of which 200,000 metric tons has already been sourced from Vietnam in a government-to-government agreement.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th,  2011.