DHAKA: Bangladesh will not import rice over the next six months to June 2012 because it has bulging domestic stocks and domestic procurement is rising, thanks to successive record crops, a senior procurement official said on Wednesday.
"We have imported 350,000 tonnes of rice so far in the current fiscal year and we don't need to buy further from the global markets in the rest of the year," said the official. The fiscal year started in July.
The imported amount is below an earlier figure of 500,000 tonnes, which was itself reduced from an original estimate of 800,000 tonnes.
"Procurement of rice locally is making good progress this year on successive record crops."
Although Bangladesh is the world's fourth biggest rice producer, with average annual output of 33 million tonnes, it emerged as a major importer early this year, doing several government-to-government deals with Vietnam and Thailand, the world's top two exporters of the grain.
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