Rice Switches From Downtrend To Neutral

 | Nov 10, 2015 12:48

Asia fills up rice inventories

Thailand has sold to Indonesia 500 thousand tonnes of new rice crop for 8bn bahts. The talks around this intergovernmental deal pushed the grain prices up, but when the deal was cut, the prices went down. Will the rice continue growing?

Judging by the details of the deal between Thailand and Indonesia, the approximate contract price for rice was $445, which is 4.3% above the price of $426.6 a tonne for 300 thousand tonnes of the Thai rice sold to Philippines in September. Meanwhile, the current rice quotes on the CME are below those of September. Thailand is negotiating selling 1mln tonnes of rice to China with delivery early next year. In Philippines, the rice crop has fallen 3% hit by typhoon Lando. Now the officials are going to import extra 1.3mln tonnes of rice next year. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), this year the global rice production will be 0.6% less than in 2014, totaling 491.4mln tonnes. In fact, the contraction may prove to be much more severe in case of El Nino effect.