Rice exports post 27 percent increase in 10 months

Rice exports from Pakistan have seen sizeable growth of 27 percent in the first ten months of current fiscal year (FY18). Pakistan has exported some 3.228 million metric tonnes of rice amounting to $1.573 billion in July to April of this fiscal year, whereas the country had exported 2.8 million metric tonnes of rice amounting to $1.23 billion in the same period of last fiscal year, depicting a significant growth of 27 percent in terms values and 15 percent in terms of quantity.
Rafique Suleman Senior Vice Chairman Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP) has said that Pakistan's rice trade has come out of the crisis which was being observed since last three years. "With joint efforts of REAP Office Bearers with Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) and Customs, value of rice export trade is showing improvement which is a good sign for our country. Further, REAP members are putting their untiring efforts and aggressive marketing to increase the rice exports and to earn valuable foreign exchange for our beloved country Pakistan," he added.
He said that Pakistani rice exporters are putting their extra ordinary efforts for fetching valuable foreign exchange for the growth of economy of our beloved country and making huge investment for installing world's latest rice machinery and most modern technology for value addition in rice. He informed that recently, REAP has organized its 10th Export Trophy Awards, in which Mamnoon Hussain President of Pakistan has awarded Best Exporters awards to many rice exporters to recognize the excellent services of their performance towards the growth of country's economy.
He informed that REAP is sending trade delegation to various countries for the aggressive marketing of Pakistani rice. In this regard, last month a delegation has come back after the successful visit to Iran, which is very lucrative and potential market for Basmati rice.
Suleman said that few years back Pakistan was exporting huge quantity of rice to Iran, however, since last year, we can only export upto 0.1 million tonnes of rice. After their meetings with many government authorities, Government Trading Corporation (GTC) has issued tenders for 20,000 Metric tonnes of Basmati Rice, in which many Pakistani rice exporting companies will participate and we are hopeful that a handsome amount of foreign exchange will be fetched by Pakistani rice exporters. In addition, China is one of the largest importer of Pakistani Non-Basmati rice. As at the end of April 2018, we have exported 274,000 Metric tonnes of rice valuing $100 million.