An announcement made by the Myanmar Rice Federation (MRF) said that the rice and broken rice exports in February totalled 191,404 metric tons, a drop of 77,431 metric tons in comparison with the exports in January.
The export of rice and broken rice has reached the record-high level in January this year in the 10-month period since April 2022 but this figure dropped in February though three more companies exported rice and broken rice. This was the lowest figure in the last four months.
The export earnings from rice and broken rice fell by US$31 million in comparison with January.
The Junta’s Directorate of Trade imposed restrictions on export earnings unilaterally and then the traders from Sino-Myanmar border trade said that the export of rice and broken rice through border trade was almost stopped.
The Department of Trade previously exempted export earnings from rice and broken rice through border trade from compulsory exchange of these foreign currencies at the rate set by the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) and then the new policy cancelled this exemption.
The traders who have close relations with Association of Traders on the Border said that this new policy hit hard the export of rice and broken rice through the border trade and then the export of these goods fell drastically within one week after the new policy was announced.
The global rice price is reportedly rising in the last week and the local market news reported that the domestic rice market was stable at the high price.
India, one of the largest rice exporters, said that they would continue the policy of increasing taxes on rice export and restrictions on rice export to keep the domestic rice price stable. Despite these measures, rice exports in India reached a record high level in 2022.
According to the statistics released by the Myanmar Rice Federation (MRF), the rice export by Myanmar during the last 11 months from April 2022 to February 2023 in the 2022-23 financial year was 2.09 million tons and earned US$783 million.
China is the largest buyer of Myanmar rice and broken rice this month. The number of rice exporting countries rose by one more country last month and the number of broken rice exporting countries fell by one less country.
The five largest buyers of broken rice from Myanmar remain unchanged but the descending order in the list was slightly changed. One of the buyers of Myanmar broken rice, Bangladesh, was not included in this five largest buyers’ list this month.
