Curbs on rice shipments pull down farm exports
Several restrictions imposed on rice exports to improve domestic supplies have adversely impacted India’s farm exports in the first seven months of current fiscal.
The shipment of agricultural items and processed foods, which had remained resilient in the last few fiscal years, dropped by 9.3% on year to $ 13.98 billion during the April-October period of the current fiscal year.
Cereals exports in the first seven months of 2023-24 dropped sharply by 10% to $ 6.17 billion on year because of the ban on white and broken rice exports, shipment duties on parboiled rice and the ban on wheat exports imposed in May last year.
According to the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, while Basmati rice exports grew by 16.27% in April-October of FY24 to $ 2.95 billion, non-basmati rice shipment declined sharply by 20.16% to $ 2.9 billion this fiscal compared to previous year.
In terms of volume, rice exports dropped by 21.49% to 9.91 million tonne (MT) in April – October period of the current fiscal mainly due to a 28% fall in the volume of non-Basmati rice shipment to 7.31 MT in the current fiscal.
However, the shipment of all other major items – livestock products, fresh and processed fruits and vegetables and other processed products such as groundnut and guargum in the agricultural and processed food products exports development authority (APEDA) basket, rose significantly in the current fiscal.
Shipment of livestock products – buffalo meat, dairy and poultry rose by 4.4% to $ 2.5 billion in April-October period of FY24 on year. This was driven by an 11.31% increase in buffalo meat exports to $ 2.09 billion in this fiscal compared to the same period last year.
The exports of fresh fruits and vegetables have risen by 15% in the first seven months of FY24 to 0.99 billion on year.
“Globally there has been a robust demand for agricultural products which we have been able to cater to,” a commerce ministry official told FE. However the official said that the ban on onion exports announced recently will impact shipment of fresh fruits and vegetables in the current fiscal.
The exports of products under the APEDA basket grew by 9% to $26.3 billion in 2022-23 as compared to FY22, due to a spike in shipment of rice, fruits and vegetables, livestock and dairy products.
The rice exports in the last fiscal rose by more than 15% year-on-year to a record $ 11.1 billion from $9.6 billion in FY22. In terms of volume, rice shipment grew by 5% to a record 22.34 MT last fiscal year-on-year.
During the August-October period, the government had imposed a temporary minimum export price (MEP) of $ 1200/tonne on Basmati rice shipment to restrict ‘illegal shipment of white non-basmati rice in the garb of premium basmati rice.’ Subsequently MEP was reduced to $ 950/tonne.
Exports of products under APEDA basket was $ 25.6 billion in 2021-22, which was around 51% of the country’s total agricultural goods exports of more than $ 50 billion.
Rest of agricultural products exports include marine, tobacco, coffee and tea.
Source Link :- https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy-curbs-on-rice-shipments-pull-down-farm-exports-3340771/
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