NEW DELHI (Commodity Online): Despite favorable stockpiles of rice, India is planning to buy as much as two million tonnes of rice in order to meet an expected shortfall in the commodity due to erratic monsoon.

India’s Food Ministry has moved a proposal to the Empowered Group of Ministers for the approval in this regard. It is only after the approval of EGoM, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukharjee, the import would start.

India’s rice purchase from domestic farmers by setting a minimum support price for the crop is expected to decline around 26 million tonnes this year due to a smaller crop that was first hit by scant rainfall and later by floods, said an official of Food Ministry, who didn’t want to be identified.

Meanwhile, India’s state run trading firms such as STC, MMTC and PEC Ltd have floated tenders to import 10000 tonnes of rice each. It is not sure, whether these imports are part of planned two million tonnes.

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India, the world’s second largest rice producer, is mainly looking at Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia for the imports.

Thailand may export more than its previous record of 10 million tons of rice in 2010 aided by large stockpiles of around seven million tons in the government granaries. India’s imports will be nominated by the federal trade ministry.

However, India may also look to import another one million tonnes of rice, over and above the present plan of two million tonnes, after assessing federal stocks in March and July 2010. Late October, India scrapped an import tax of 70% on certain varieties of rice to boost supplies after a drought reduced the output of the summer-sown staple grain.

India’s rice stocks as of October 1, 2009 totaled 15.35 million tonnes, compared with the government’s buffer and strategic reserve norm of 7.2 million tonnes. The quantities imported will be sold in the open market.

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