Rice Price – Weekly Report – May 15 2013
Report Highlights:
TH3046 – Domestic and export prices declined 1-3 percent as the government is reportedly speeding up its rice stock sales to finance the current MY2012/13 Off-Season Rice Paddy Pledging Program.
Domestic and export prices declined approximately 1-3 percent due to larger exportable supplies and the weakening of the Thai baht to 29.7 baht/ US$, as compared to 29.4 baht/$ in the previous week. The government is reportedly being flexible about the conditions for its rice stock sales to speed up the stock release due to limited financial resources to finance the current MY2012/13 Off-season Rice Paddy Pledging Program. Presently, the government has approximately 35 billion baht ($1.2 billion) left for the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) to operate the current pledging program which will cost approximately 105 billion baht ($3.5 billion) for the pledging target of 7 million metric tons of paddy.
The MY 2012/13 Main-Crop Rice Paddy Pledging Program (October 1, 2012 – March 31, 2013)
received pledges of approximately 14.2 million metric tons (9.4 million metric tons milled equivalent).The BAAC has already provided an estimated 214 billion baht ($7.4 billion) and expects to dish out another 15 billion baht ($0.5 billion) in additional loans to farmers under this program. The current MY2012/13 Off-Season Rice Paddy Pledging Program, which began on April 1, 2013 and will run until BangkokSeptember 15, 2013, has already received pledges of 2.0 million metric tons of paddy (1.3 million metric tons milled equivalent as of April 30, 2013), most of which was white rice paddy. The BAAC provided approximately 22 billion baht ($0.8 billion) in loans to farmers under this program. Presently, the government is holding rice stocks of approximately 16 million metric tons milled rice, of which around 8 million tons (mostly white rice) are carry-over stocks from the previous pledging program; and the remainder is rice stocks from this year’s pledging.
