Key Highlights and Tips for International Rice Traders
Rice is one of the most commonly utilized food staple in the arena of international trade across the globe. This informative report will shed light on some of the useful details and factual information encompassing the trade in rice and in its later part; it will provide a few helpful tips for the trading entities involved in the import / export of this crop across the globe.
According to the recent facts concerning the international trade in this domain, there is a considerable disparity amongst the figures of worldwide rice production and the extent to which it is traded internationally.
Studies have shown that the overall international trade in rice contributes to even less than 8 percent of its world production. Most of the countries involved in the production and cross border trade of rice comprises of the developing nations of African and Asian origin. The contribution of such states towards the world trade in rice is about 83 percent of exports and 85 percent of imports. As contrary to the number of countries involved in the importing activities of rice, there are only a limited number of countries who are dominating the exports in this food staple internationally.
The top positions in the list of rice exporting countries are held by Vietnam, Thailand, China, United States and India. China, once considered the major rice exporter a decade and a few years back, has conversely became the largest net importer of rice by the fiscal year 2013. Such drastic change in its rice exports capacity was brought forth due in part to the marketing edge taken over by its competing players like United States and India, in the recent years.
Basmati and Jasmine rice are some of its famous and high on demand variety which is well liked and heavily consumed amongst the major fraction of world’s population.
The recent report published by USDA – a governing body of the US which looks after the local and international matters pertaining to farming, agriculture, forestry, and food; India led the list of international rice exporters of year 2012 with its mammoth trade volume of 9.75 million tonnes, with Vietnam and Thailand following it by their trade volumes of 7 million and 6.5 million tonnes respectively. Pakistan was the fourth biggest rice exporter with its 3.75 million tonnes export volume followed by the US with its rice exporting figures of 3.5 million tonnes at the year end.
Countries like Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Brazil and a few African and Persian Gulf states were the major rice importers for the same year. Nevertheless, the international exports of rice as compared to the volume of its production is still minuscule which is due to the fact that the largest producers of this crop (i.e. China and India) are themselves its biggest consumers as well, which leaves a little margin for this crop to be utilized in the international trade of this food staple.
If you have read this article till here, you will like to read the later part of this article as well which will focus on providing some great tips to the SMEs engaged in the international trade of rice. The common principle “more the demand, higher the supply” clears the myth for the rice traders in selecting the advantageous regions for conducting their import / export activity.
Clarifying the LC and T&Cs is the prime activity in international trade which should be diligently done on part of both the parties beforehand. In this way, the chances of breach of contract or occurrence of any fraudulent or illicit activity can be substantially diminished. The advent in technology has eased the hassle of conventional trading through the access of online B2B trade portals which can be utilized by the international traders not only for gaining the advantages of cost and efficiency in their businesses, but also for expanding their international outreach to meet the wide scattered potential buyers / sellers in a lesser time frame.
