Thailand loses world’s 2nd largest rice exporter ranking to Vietnam

Vietnam outranked Thailand as the world’s second largest rice exporter during the first six months of this year, with India remaining top, according to the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

From January to June, India exported 11.68 million tonnes of rice, an increase of 36.5% year on year, followed by Vietnam’s 4.72 million tonnes, up 3.6%, Thailand’s 3.73 million tonnes, down 27.3%, Pakistan’s 2.76 million tonnes, down 20.2%, and the United States’ 1.40 million tonnes, down 23.5%.

The five top importers of Thai rice were Iraq, 582,703 tonnes, representing 15.6% of total rice exports, the US, 430,603 tonnes, or 7.4% of total exports, African nations, 359,031 tonnes, or 2.5% of total exports, China, 332,183 tonnes and Senegal, 165,294 tonnes.

The association’s president, Charoen Laothamatas, said that the value of Thai rice exports for the first six months of this year is estimated at 75.57 billion baht, down by 36.4% on the same period last year.

The association predicts that, in July, Thailand is expected to have exported more than 600,000 tonnes of rice, because several countries, such as Iraq, China, Japan and some African nations increased their rice orders, but that may be due to decreasing rice prices.

Rice prices are expected to continue to weaken, due to a combination of supply increases among rice producing countries and weakening demand, resulting in competitive price cutting by rice exporters.