After exporting coarse rice to Sri Lanka on government-to-government (G-to-G) basis Bangladesh has now taken a move to offer the staple to private importers of other countries, officials said.
The move has been taken, as the country's buffer stock of rice has reached to over 1.2 million tonnes. The government usually keeps 0.8 million tonnes of rice in warehouses to respond to emergency situations, if any. Â
The Ministry of Food (MoF) has recently requested the Ministry of Commerce to give waiver from the export policy and allow the government to export 0.1 million tonnes of coarse rice each year to private importers abroad.
The Ministry of Agriculture has already given its nod to the move, provided availability of adequate rice in the country to meet domestic demand.
Bangladesh exported 50,000 tonnes of parboiled rice to Sri Lanka last year, following request of the government of the island nation. The latter was hit by an 11-monthlong drought, leading to price hike of the item there.
A senior official at MoF told the FE that the stock of rice in the public warehouses across the country is continuously increasing since public procurement of the staple food for the current fiscal year (FY), 2015-16, is still going on.
Besides, he said taking delivery of rice from the warehouses has reduced significantly, as the government is distributing cash money instead of rice or wheat under test relief (TR) and food for work programmes.
The open market sale (OMS) of rice by the government bodies has also decreased, leading to stockpile of a huge quantity of the item in the godowns.
The official said it is feared that quality of the stockpiled rice may deteriorate for being preserved in godowns for a long period.
Sources said amid the situation the government had invited expression of interest (EoI) from other countries through their embassies in Dhaka for exporting coarse rice.
Some of the counties, including several African nations, have responded to the request and expressed their interest to import rice from Bangladesh.
Another official of MoF said the government will have to continue procuring rice to ensure that the growers get optimum prices. The government needs to create free space in the godowns to continue rice purchase and preserve the new procurements, he added.
According to the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU) some 1.21 million tonnes of rice were in the government's stock until November 26.
The government has planned to start procurement of 0.2 million tonnes of Aman rice from mid-December at Tk 31 per kg. This year some 1.0 million tonnes of Boro rice was procured until October.
Officials said the target of public food distribution for the current FY is set at 2.78 million tonnes. Until late November only 0.46 million tonnes of food grains were distributed, which is about 16.6 per cent of the annual target. Last year actual distribution of food grains was about 1.84 million tonnes.
According to FPMU, presently the government is continuing small-scale OMS of rice in some areas of Dhaka and Chittagong, and flour all over the country. The coarse rice is being sold at Tk 20 per kg and flour at Tk 19 per kg.
Until November public sector entities did not import any rice, but the private sector has imported some 0.2 million tonnes of the staple food against 0.3 million tonnes during the same period of last FY.
Presently coarse rice is being sold in the domestic market at prices between Tk 33 and Tk 35 per kg.
 syful-islam@outlook.com    Â
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Govt moves to export rice to create space in warehouses
Syful Islam | Published: December 12, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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