Asian rice prices static on lack of demand

Asian rice export prices were static in the past week as foreign buyers did not rush to buy anew due to ample stocks in Thailand, while high prices in Vietnam kept buyers at bay, traders said on Wednesday. The slow rice markets in Thailand and Vietnam have been expected and could last until early 2016, when new import quotas are issued in importing nations and fresh grain arrives from Vietnam's new harvest, traders said.
Only small, regular customers have been buying Thai rice, while no huge demand has emerged lately, a Thai trader said. "There's so much rice in the world, so they don't need to rush to buy from Thailand anymore," he said. Thai 5-percent broken grain stood unchanged at $353-$365 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) Bangkok in the past two weeks.
Vietnam's rice export market also been idle in the past week with fresh demand absent and prices higher than those of Thai grain, while exporters were focusing on loading for the Philippines and Indonesia, traders said. Regular buyers from the Philippines and China may be waiting for new import quotas in 2016, so they did not ask much for price reference, a Vietnamese exporter in Ho Chi Minh City said.
"The slow movement could last until the harvest of the next crop as prices are too high," another trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. Indicative offers for Vietnam's 5-percent broken grain widened to $373-$380 a tonne, FOB Saigon Port, from $375-$380 a week ago, while the 25-percent broken grain stood unchanged at $360 a tonne.
Nine vessels are scheduled to arrive at the port in the first half of December for loading a combined 140,000 tonnes for the Philippines and Indonesia, based on a shipping industry report. Vietnam has been shipping the grain for the two Southeast Asian nations under deals for a combined 1.45 million tonnes. Traders said loading has been slow, due partly to tight supply between two crops. The next harvest will not start in the Mekong Delta food basket until late February 2016. In November, Vietnam exported an estimated 900,000 tonnes of rice, bringing the January-November export volume to 6.26 million tonnes, up 3.9 percent from a year ago, based on government data.