Mr. Charoen Laothammathat, President of the Thai Rice Exporters Association said that exports of rice paddy next year should fetch a price of around US$420 a tonne. However, the price might be lower if the government dumps the market with the 18 million tones of rice from its stockpiles. Such a move will also affect new-season rice to be harvested at the end of this year.

To address the problem, he suggested the government decrease rice planting areas both for in-season and off-season rice, and then fill in the shortfall with rice from its stockpiles as well as push for more exports in order to reduce the amount of rice in stockpiles to 4-5 million tons as usual. Charoen also showed his support to the newly proposed measure by the government to help low-income farmers who own small pieces of land by giving them a subsidy of 1,000 baht per rai.

Speaking about impacts of the ongoing demonstration in Hong Kong on Thai rice exports, Charoen admitted the event has caused rice exports to the territory to decline to 150,000-160,000 tonnes recently, instead of around 300,000 tonnes a year. Another factor attributed to the decline was the rice pledging scheme which had made Thai rice less competitive in terms of price in the past two years. Rather than Thailand, Hong Kong then imported rice from Vietnam.

However, Charoen said that the Thai Rice Exporters Association is negotiating with the Philippines to export 300,000 tonnes of rice to that country, and also has plans to export 200,000 tonnes to China and 175,000 tonnes to Indonesia. Meanwhile, it is eyeing to bid for a quota of 500,000 tonnes to be supplied to the Philippines. He is confident that Thailand will be able to export 11 million tonnes of rice in total this year.

Source: National News Bureau & Public Relations