Indian rice export challenges

 The Gulfood 2021 held between February 21-25 in Dubai did not garner much business for Indian basmati exporters as people stayed away in fear of coronavirus. However, South American buyers such as Peru and Argentina have recently granted market access to the Indian basmati rice, which will help the basmati rice trade to boost exports and get better prices.

“We were expecting to make good business at Gulfood. But the occupancy at the exhibition was little less than 40 per cent. The fear of Covid had kept the buyers away,” said Gautam Miglani, owner of LRNK, a Haryana-based basmati rice exporter.

This resulted in prices of Pusa steam basmati rice falling to Rs 62 per kg from Rs 65 per kg and the parboiled basmati rice falling to Rs 53 per kg from Rs 56 per kg some days 10 days ago. On the other hand, transportation charges have increased from Rs 140 per quintal to Rs 175 per quintal.

For the April-December period of the current financial year, total rice exports grew 80 per cent to 11.59 million tonne from 6.42 million tonne in FY20. Of this, shipments of basmati rice has grown by 19 per cent at 3.38 million tonne from 2.84 million tonne in FY20, while that of non-basmati have seen a whopping increase of 129 per cent to 8.21 million tonne from 3.58 million tonne same period last fiscal.

know more Indian rice exporters in a fix as transport costs rise, demand from Gulf drops