The government has sold around 615,000 tonnes of stockpiled rice to local entrepreneurs for 12.3 billion baht, and the money will be used to repay the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, the Foreign Trade Department announced.

Director-general Surasak Riangkrul said the sale includes fragrant rice, 100% white rice, 5% white rice, 10% glutinous rice and broken rice.

Several buyers were involved, such as CP Rice, Asia Golden Rice, Capital Cereal, Royal Richy Rice and a group of exporters under the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

He said off loading stockpiled rice at this time would help the government repay 30 billion baht owed to the BAAC in the final quarter of 2013. The sub-committee approving the rice sale had urged the Public Warehouse Organisation and Market for Farmers Organisation to speed up repaying the money to the BAAC.

Mr Surasak said he believed Thailand would be able to export more rice in the final quarter as a result of the government’s stockpile release via government-to-government deals and sales to local rice traders.

Thailand exported 5.68 million tonnes of rice during the period Jan 1 to Nov 20, 2013 for US$3.82 billion (114.77 billion baht). This was a decline of 8.78% in exports and 10.16% in terms of value year on year.

Mr Surasak said he expected Thailand would be able to export up to 8.5 million tonnes of rice in 2013 in total, for a return of $5.7 billion (171.34 billion baht).

For 2014, he predicted rice exports of at least 8 million tonnes worth $4.8 billion at an average price of $600 a tonne.

The government's projections are much higher than the private sector's, which predicts the country will ship only around 7 million tonnes of rice in 2013.

According to MR Pridiyathorn Devakula, the government spent 683 billion baht over the past two years to buy 44.45 million tonnes of paddy, which devolves to 27 million tonnes of milled rice.

Source: Bangkok Post