Tuesday 19 March 2013

Regional rice giants anticipate AEC

Chief regional rice exporters held a meeting aimed to boost multilateral agricultural trade between the countries at Park Royal Hotel in Yangon on March 13.

The Myanmar Rice Federation (MRF), Thai Rice Exporters Association (TREA) and Vietnamese Food Association (VFA) held an open panel in anticipation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015.
“We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the rice market and planting areas in each country. This meeting will lead to cooperation between rice exporters,” said Dr Soe Tun, chairman of the Myanmar Farmers’ Association (MFA).

Mr Vichai Sriprasert, president of Bangkok-based Riceland International Limited, addressed Myanmar’s rice pledging scheme in Thailand.

“The [Thai] government makes the margin for farmers, exporters and dealers. For exporters, the government makes a 1 percent margin. But exporters produce many tonnes of rice and they can survive with this margin. For farmers, the government makes a 50pc and above margin but farmers are still poor. Now, our government is improving the price of paddy and farmers are happy about that. But, they don’t understand that higher prices mean lower incomes,” he said.

U Tin Htut Oo, agribusiness and rural consultant to the National Economic and Social Advisory Council, spoke about cooperation in the multilateral rice trade.

“Export policy should benefit farmers,” he said.

“In Myanmar, farming price is too low to benefit the rice producers. Meanwhile, we have big ambitions to export.”

General secretary of the MRF, U Ye Min Aung, said: “We aim to boost the volume of export to two million tonnes in the 2014-2015 fiscal year and to four million tonnes in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Currently, our major volume is 5pc broken rice, but it can’t be exported to quality-oriented countries like Japan, Indonesia and Korea.”

source: The Myanmar Times

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