India and Vietnam curb rice exports

[GliderGuider]

Vietnam, India curb rice exports as prices double

HANOI/NEW DELHI, March 28 (Reuters) - Major rice exporters Vietnam and India on Friday said they will curb overseas sales more in an effort to combat food inflation, threatening to heighten the world's anxiety over staple food supplies.

Hanoi confirmed it will cut rice exports by 22 percent this year from last. India raised the minimum sale price for rice exports by more than 50 percent, effectively ending overseas sales of all but the highest quality grades.

Vietnam, the world's second-biggest exporter, will limit rice shipments to 3.5 milliion tonnes, down from 4.5 million last year, in order to stabilise prices, a government statement quoted Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung as saying, after Hanoi imposed a limit for the first 10-month shipment last week.

India, which could overtake Vietnam this year, has raised the minimum export price for non-basmati rice to $1,000 per tonne from $650 to protect domestic supplies. It also scrapped tax incentives for exporters of non-Basmati rice to try and tame price pressures in Asia's third-largest economy.

Nearly half the planet's 6.6 billion people depend on rice to survive but rising populations and economic growth mean that the world is already eating more of the grain than is harvested.

World rice inventories now stand at about 72 million tonnes, their lowest since the mid-1970s and enough to cover about 17 percent of global annual consumption, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show. Just eight years ago stockpiles were equal to 35 percent of demand.

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