As more buyers from South America, Eastern Africa and South East Asia start queuing up for the Indian rice, the exports of the cereal — both basmati and non-basmati — are seen scaling new highs this fiscal.
Rice exports including both basmati and non-basmati types are expected to range between 16 and 17 million tonnes (mt) against previous fiscal’s 9.48 mt.
South American buyers such as Peru and Argentina have recently granted market access to the Indian basmati rice. Similarly in Eastern Africa, countries such as Angola and Tanzania among others, who traditionally bought from Pakistan, have now turned to India, while Far East countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia are showing higher interest.
For the April-December period of current financial year, total rice exports have shown 80 per cent increase at 11.59 mt (6.42 mt). Of this, shipments of basmati rice has grown by 19 per cent at 3.38 mt (2.84 mt), while that of non-basmati have seen a whopping increase of 129 per cent at…