Rice exports may hit 4m tons

REAP’s target tops previous estimates by a million tons.

KARACHI: The top rice export body said on Tuesday that it aims to export four million tons in fiscal year 2010-11, about one million tons more than previous estimates made after destructive floods in August.

Irfan Ahmed Sheikh, Chairman of Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (Reap), said total rice production would be nearly six million tons. A senior food ministry official, however, low-balled Reap’s estimate and said output would be about five million tons.

“We dispute the government’s figure,” Sheikh told Reuters. “Our assessments are that the production will be nearly six million tons. We are now aiming to export about four million tons of rice this year on good global demand.”

Reap’s export target tops previous estimates by almost a million tons. The government in September estimated losses of up to two million tons from the recent floods. Before the floods, the food ministry expected 6.1 million tons for the crop.

The rice season runs from April to November and final estimates of the crop size will not be available until late December.

The reason for the increased estimate, Sheikh said, is that the monsoon floods, which devastated more than 2.4 million hectares of farmland, did not affect the rice crop in Punjab province, which produces 60 per cent of the total national output.

Production losses in the second-largest rice growing province of Sindh were estimated at about 500,000 tons, but that would largely be offset by better yield in Punjab, Sheikh said. The president of the Agri-Forum Pakistan agreed with Reap’s production estimates. “Despite losses in Sindh, our production estimate is between 5.7 and 6.1 million tons, as per-acre yield in Punjab has increased by up to 10 per cent,” said Ibrahim Mughal.

Farmers produced a bumper crop of 6.7 million tons of milled rice in 2009-10 and exported about 4.5 million tons. Up to 800,000 tons were retained, traders said. Domestic consumption of milled rice is about 2.3 million tons.

Rice exports in July-October 2010 rose by 17.26 per cent to 1.1 million tons, compared with 940,838 tons in the same period last year, according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics.

During the four-month period, exports of basmati rice stood at 304,141 tons, almost the same as last year. Other varieties totalled 799,052 tons for the same period, compared with 636,773 tons.

Rice is the country’s third largest crop after wheat and cotton and contributes about 1.6 per cent to the gross domestic product.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2010.