Rama Krishna Sangem
India has emerged as the top exporter of rice in the world. Though China is the top producer of rice, it is India that exports most rice to the countries across the globe. Interestingly, our rice is not just getting us precious foreign exchange and revenues, it is also bringing us some what soft power from the importing countries. Still the challenges faced by the exporters are unattended by the governments both at the centre and state levels.
Rice is one of the major foodgrains/cereals produced and exported by India. While China is the leading rice producing nation globally, India occupies the second position; however, as regards export of rice, India tops the chart as the major exporting nation. In Financial Year (FY) 2021-22 total rice production was 1294.71 Lakh tonnes which had significantly scaled upto 1357.55 Lakh tonnes in FY 2022-23 and has inched to 1370 Lakh tonnes in FY 2023-24, as per a Government of India’s Director General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics, 2024 report.
As per India’s International Trade related Principal Commodity classification system, Rice is classified as Rice- Basmati with code A3. and Rice- Other than Basmati with code A4. The following study based on DGCIS database and spread over Financial Years 2020-21 to 2023-24 provides recent insights into export pattern of Rice by India.
Basmati rice most favoured
Export of Basmati Rice by India has been experiencing a rising trend both in terms of quantity exported and in terms of export value earned from FY 2021-22 to FY 2022-23. In FY 2023-24 Exports of commodity code A3 had a share of 1.34% in India’s total export value basket, higher than 2021-22 and 2022-23 figures of 0.84% and 1.06% respectively.
Exports of Rice- other than Basmati has substantially declined in FY 2023-24 (significantly on account of India’s policy of export ban on non-basmati rice since July, 2023) over FY 2022-23 by 37.52% in terms of quantity exported and by 28.05% in terms of export value earned, resulting in fall in A4’s share in total exports from 1.41% to 1.05% in 2023-24 vis-à-vis 2022-23.
It needs to be mentioned herein that, in quantity terms, export of rice-other than basmati (i.e. comprising varied forms of rice) is way higher than export of basmati rice.In 2023-24 export of rice-other than basmati was 111.16 lakh tonnes and export of rice-basmati was 52.42 lakh tonnes in the same year.
As is observed from Table 1 and 2 above, total export of rice combining both categories was to the tune of 163.58 lakh tonnes in FY 2023-24 which is close to 12% (11.94%) of total domestic production during the same year.
UAE, Iran, Kuwait main importers
The top 10 export destinations of Basmati Rice are quite consistent constituting a share of 77.5% in India’s total export of Basmati Rice for FY 2023-24. However, the share of the top 10 destinations has had a gradual decline since FY 2021-22 when the share was 80%.
Hence, the share of all other destinations has gradually been rising reflecting a positive sign towards diversification of export destinations. Among the top 10 export destinations, the shares of Iran, UAE and Kuwait have declined in FY 2023-24 vis-à-vis FY 2021-22 and the shares of the remaining seven leading export destinations have increased. Apart from USA and UK, India’s lead export country partners for Rice are Asian and Middle-East nations.
