An overview of India’s rice exports in 2015
The Largest Exporter in the World
India holds the rice marked very rigidly with its good quality rice production in surplus. It has carved its niche in the rice exports and is one of the top exporters of rice owing to its exclusive production of Basmati rice which is truly considered the king of the variety of rice and exclusively grown and nurtured in the Himalayan slopes and farms. With good policies and shaping up in the year 2015 India’s rice exports has seen a steady rise in the international market. Indian rice statistics reveal that in the last financial year’s first half India has exported 55.26 lakh tons of rice which were valued at a figure of more than $13.7 billion.
Figures reveal that rice exports in the months of April to September span of time has seen an export of 20.84 LT of basmati rice that is valued over $1.91 billion and for other varieties the rice price was over $1.25 billion for 34.42 LT. The rice price noted by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as a written reply to the Lok Sabha exhibited a figure of $7.8 billion for a quantity of 1.19 crore tones of rice that was exported.
Rice Production in India and its surrounding regions
In Asia rice is treated as a staple food which is consumed almost 3 times in a day on an average and compared to other edible grains, the global rice production has always seen a balance against demand with the surplus traded in the market. But with global warming and pressures of climate change there has been a stark change observed in the monsoon rains which has grown erratic leading to serious concerns. Policy makers are worried to find out new ways to combat this and ensure benefits to consumers and farmers.
IRRI or the Philippines based International Rice Research Institute is constantly striving to develop rice varieties that will be able to combat climatic adversities like soil salinity, drought, floods and so on which are on rise due to global warming. Flood resistant rice strains that were developed in 1970s have shown promise in Bangladesh and Nepal along with India of course. Millions of farmers in India are now in a position to grow rice varieties that are able to remain submerged for 2 to 3 weeks suffering very little damage.
IRRI mission in India and Nepal are led by Uma Shankar Singh now also has to say that rice varieties are being developed which can now fight drought conditions too and farmers will be able to use these varieties very well. Rice exports and production in India and all over Asia which is almost home to 37% of the rice growing area in the world are prone to soil salinity, floods and droughts and hence improvement on the same can ensure rice exports are on the rise since both floods and severe periods of drought are quite frequent all over India.
Singh also stresses that development of such rice variety is important not only because the overall rainfall received over the country has changed but their non uniform distribution is becoming a big source of worry.
A very important observation by Singh includes that any major flood in India and China can seriously destroy the supply of rice in the international market showing undesirable spikes in rice price as exports will suffer a huge blow. The amount of rice produced is majorly consumed making it quite a tight situation. To manage for the time being if any calamity hits India or China IRRI maintains a bank of seeds which is a collection of 127,000 cultivated rice varieties which is termed as “ landraces” apart from quite a few specimen collected from around the world. This is supposed to be a treasure collection from all over the world carrying the desirable traits of variety of rice that is grown all over the world. The research works have been tested for flood resistant variety in 2013 by Indian farmers and now its time for drought resistant types to further boost the India rice exports.
Future of Indian Rice Exports
Indian farmers are being constantly trained and educated to correctly use the seeds supplied by the research teams and they are progressively getting aware of the benefits of the seeds that are being used by them.
One of the top Thai exporters body reported that India has achieved a very big milestone of overtaking Thailand in terms of rice exports in the year 2015. India rice export reached a figure of 10.23 million tones as pointed out by Thai experts. Figures of 9.8 million tones have been exported by Thailand, down 10.8% year on year in the year 2015 as noted by Charoen Laodhammatas, the Chairman of Thai Rice Exports Association. The Chairman has observed a downfall in the demands of rice in some countries as a result of falling oil prices which has impacted the buying capacities of the nations. A total contraction in the global economy has resulted Thailand underperforming.
The year 2015 has been a year of fruitful struggle for India as India has almost managed to open large markets of rice exports in other nations. Indian embassy in Indonesian capital Jakarta has been working diligently to be able to seek a G2G channel for Indian rice exports in the Indonesian market. Indonesia has also been more than interested to strike the deal to open the channels for rice imports from India. In the beginning of the year 2016 Indonesia finally decided to open its market for bovine meat, pharmaceuticals and Indian rice. It was considered as a big breakthrough for India to diversify its baskets of exports to the Southeast Asian nation Indonesia with which the trade deficit has been quite noticeable. India seemed to be quite resolute in supporting Indonesia to overcome its rice shortage which has been the results of severe droughts in the county.
In the end of this year new import orders from December 2015 till June 2016 were expected to be allowed for Iran’s customs officials. Domestic demands of Iran were to be met which meant an import of 6 lakhs tons of rice, a major chunk will be comprised by Indian basmati rice.
So with major channels of exports opening up at the end of the year 2015, Indian rice statistics show rice exports got a boost for establishing better qualities of rice and maximize its exports.
