USDA GAIN: Oilseeds, Cotton, Sugar, Grain and Feed
16 April 2012
USDA GAIN: Thailand Weekly Rice Price Update
TH2039 Trading activities are quiet this week due to the Thai New Year holidays. Exporters expect
that the Thai rice export pace will likely drop to 0.4 million tons by May after the shipments of
parboiled rice to Nigeria are fulfilled. 
Trading activities are quiet this week as many rice businesses are closed until next week due to the Thai
New Year holidays. In addition, exporters who are fulfilling their outstanding contracts of parboiled
rice to Nigeria have secured their rice supplies for the shipments that need to arrive by June 2012.
Presently, there are no new purchases from Nigeria due to the new import tariff rate of 53 percent will
be effective on July1, 2012, compared to the current rate of 33 percent. Exporters expect that the Thai
rice export pace will likely drop from an average of 0.5 – 0.6 million tons during February – April to 0.4
million tons from May onwards.
Presently, the Government is holding total intervention stocks of around 8.3 million tons milled
equivalent, of which 2.0 million tons are old-crop intervention stocks, and 6.3 million tons are
MY2011/12 crop.
The MY2011/12 main-crop Paddy Pledging Program took delivery of a total of 6.8 million tons of
paddy (4.5 million tons milled equivalent (Table 2)). The remainder is from the current off-season
BangkokPaddy Pleading Program which has absorbed 2.7 million tons of paddy (1.5 million tons milled
equivalent) since it began on March 1 up to April 4. The total weekly pledging increased by 0.4 million
tons or 17.3 percent from last week’s total of 2.3 million tons (Table 3). The Government expects that
the program will pledge around 8.0 million tons of paddy (5.3 million tons milled equivalent),
accounting for 72.0 percent of the total off-season production.
Rice Export Update
Unofficial rice exports (excluding fragrant rice) for April 2-8, 2012 totaled 117,757 tons, up 8,230 tons
from the previous week, and up 5,048 tons from the four-week moving average of 112,708 tons.
Exports of white rice and parboiled rice during January1 – April 8, 2012 totaled 1,324,247 tons, down
51.2 percent from 2,713,767 tons in the previous year.
According to the Department of Foreign trade, Ministry of Commerce, total rice exports (including
fragrant rice) during January 1 – April 3, 2012 amounted to 1,673,847 tons, down 45.9 percent from
3,093,833 tons in the previous year.
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