After lull, India’s rice exporters witness surge in global demand

After a lull of three months since the imposition of 20% export duty on rice, India’s rice exporters are witnessing a surge in demand from the global markets and international buyers are willing to pay a price of $400 per tonne, as compared to $330 per tonne before the imposition of the export duty.

The government had imposed the duty on September 9 last year to contain the domestic price rise. Area under kharif fell 5.62% to 38.39 million hectares in last year’s season due to poor rains in some states including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal.

Buyers are absorbing the export duty, despite which Indian rice is cheaper than rice from Thailand which is commanding a price of $500 per tonne in the international market.


“The upswing in global demand will help India to achieve 15.5 million tonnes of non-basmati rice exports, which are only 10% lower compared to last year even though earlier it was thought exports would come down to 12-13 mt following the imposition of export duty,” said BV Krishna Rao, president, Rice Exporters Association of India.

“India controls 45% of the global trade of rice and is a major supplier to the world markets,” said Rao. “Africa and Asia are the biggest buyers of Indian rice. Therefore, there was a knee-jerk reaction after the export duty was imposed. But slowly buyers have returned and they are picking good volumes. As against 17.26 million tonnes of export in 2021-22, we are expecting 15.5 million tonnes of rice exports in 2022-23.”

In 2021-22, India shipped an all-time-high 21.21 million tonnes of rice valued at $9.66 billion – 17.26 mt of non-basmati worth $6.12 billion and 3.95 mt of basmati rice worth $3.54 billion.

In the current fiscal, the growth has been primarily led by basmati rice, with exports surging 40.3% year-on-year in value from April-December 2022 to $3.34 billion and 16.6% in volume to 3.20 mt from 2.74 mt. Non-basmati rice exports grew at a slower pace due to the export duty levied by the government, up 3.3% in value to $4.66 billion and 4.6% in volume to 13.17 mt.