Bangladesh will soon end a three-year-old ban on exports of aromatic rice due to bulging domestic reserves and record crops, a government minister said on Wednesday. Bangladesh, the world's fourth-biggest rice producer, banned overseas shipments of common varieties in May 2008 following a sharp drop in domestic stocks, and banned the export of all varieties one year later.
It typically exported a small quantity of aromatic rice to the United States, Britain and Middle East, home to a large number of non-resident Bangladeshis. "The decision to lift the ban on aromatic rice exports has been taken because we have a satisfactory stock to face any emergency and are expecting record rice crops again this year," Food and Disaster Management Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque told Reuters. The government's priority is to bring down high inflation, running in the double digits, but retail prices of aromatic rice have shot up over recent weeks, which market insiders said was due to hoarding by millers and wholesellers.
Total rice production in Bangladesh hit 33.54 million tonnes in the financial year through June 2011, up from 32.32 million a year earlier, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. This year it is heading for record rice production of more than 34 million tonnes.
Rice stocks with the government now stand at more than 1 million tonnes, double the figure of a year ago, boosted by the previous year's hefty imports and more domestic supply. The government imported an all-time high of more than 2.2 million tonnes of rice and wheat in the 2010/11 fiscal year, with rice accounting for 1.3 million tonnes. This fiscal year rice imports dropped to 350,000 tonnes.
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