Bulk supply of rice causes price slide

The prices of rice and rice crops slipped owing to the bulk supply of rice in the domestic markets, traders said.
The prices of rice crop in domestic markets stand at K616,000-K920,000 per 100-baskets. At present, the rice worth of K43,000-K50,000 per bag is highly demanded in the domestic market. The prices of high-quality rice move in the range of K34,500-K58,000 per bag, Bayintnaung Rice Wholesale Centre’s price data indicated.
Meanwhile, the low-quality rice fetches K2,2500-K2,3500 per bag. Low-quality rice was mostly purchased by Chinese traders yet COVID-19 restriction measures negatively affected the border trade between Myanmar and China.
At present, traders turned to maritime trade for rice export. Myanmar shipped rice and broken rice to China, regional countries and European Union countries through maritime trade. Trading in the domestic market is quite sluggish amidst the excess supply.
Myanmar has shipped more than 801,000 tonnes of rice and broken rice to foreign trade partners between 1 October and 30 December in the current six-month mini-budget period (2021-2022), Myanmar Rice Federation stated.
Myanmar also generated an income of US$700 million from 2 million tonnes of rice exports to the foreign countries in the past 2020-2021 financial year.
About 80,000 bags of rice and broken rice were earlier traded per day at the Bayintnaung Rice Wholesale Centre, whereas the trade volume plummeted to about 30,000 bags.—GNLM