RI seeking to re-export huge quantities of rice
RI seeking to re-export huge quantities of rice
SINGAPORE (Reuter): Indonesia, faced with growing rice
supplies, is seeking to re-export some of the huge quantity of
rice it imported last year, especially from India, but traders
said yesterday that there were few buyers around.
Indonesia, a significant rice producer, turned to imports in
late 1994 after adverse weather conditions hit domestic harvests.
The government put the purchases at 2.0 million tons in the
1995/1996 fiscal year ending this month.
But local harvests have now returned to normal, swelling rice
stocks at National Logistics Agency (Bulog) to two million tons
in late February from 1.8 million earlier in the month.
A trader at a Singapore firm said he heard Indonesia was
attempting to re-sell "hundreds of thousands of tons" of Indian
rice to West Africa.
But a major Bangkok trader said no deals had been concluded
yet. "They want to re-export but there are very few interested
buyers," he said, adding that the exportable volume was estimated
to be around 200,000-300,000 tons.
Traders said the other factors behind Indonesia's attempts to
re-export were the low quality of the Indian rice and the problem
of obtaining storage space for the grain.
The bulk of the Indian rice, drawn down from New Delhi's
substantial government stockpile, was shipped to Indonesia
between January and October last year.
"Despite the quality, the Indonesians initially accepted the
rice because they had no choice.
"But towards the last quarter of last year, they started
rejecting the same rice because of the quality when they realized
they had sufficient stocks," he said.
The rice is still edible but traders said one option is to
turn it into animal feed to help cut possible losses.
Jakarta had committed to buy up to two million tons of Indian
rice last year. Traders said they were not sure how much of that
rice was delivered but added that the deals which were canceled
involved cargoes that were not loaded or delayed at Indian ports.
The Indonesian rice harvest, which started in some parts of
Java in February, is expected to go into full swing this month.
Indonesia produced 49 million tons of unhusked rice in 1995,
compared with 46.4 million in 1994 and 48.14 million in 1993.
Bulog chairman Beddu Amang said last month that rice imports
were continuing to arrive and the agency was facing problems in
obtaining storage space.
"We have enough warehouses to store the rice we will be buying
from the farmers when the harvesting season comes. Our problem is
how to store the rice imports landing at the major ports," he
said.