FROM PAGE B1

“We are trying to import rice from Thailand. Recently, they have responded positively,” Hossain said.

Bangladesh, the world’s third-biggest producer of rice, first cut the import duty on rice to 25 per cent from 62.5 per cent to increase the supply to cool off rice prices in the fourth week of June amid repeated floods.

Since then, the government has permitted private firms to import more than 10 lakh tonnes of rice, mostly from India.

In the last one month, prices of fine rice declined 3.65 per cent in Dhaka city. But the price of coarse grain, a benchmark followed by the government to track the price of the staple, has gone up by 1.2 per cent, according to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.

Chitta Majumder, managing director of Majumder Group of Industries, said the move by India may not raise the import cost of his firm as it has placed orders for the rice grades that have not drawn any fresh levy.

“But if the export duty is slapped on the rice imported by others, the local market may become unstable,” he warned.

The tax would discourage buyers from making purchases from India and prompt them to shift towards rivals Thailand and Vietnam, which have been struggling to increase shipments and raise prices, reports Reuters.

India has excluded parboiled and basmati rice from the export duty, but white and brown rice will draw the duty, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of India’s exports, said BV Krishna Rao, president of the All India Rice Exporters Association.

India has been the world’s largest rice exporter in the last decade: export earnings grew 9 per cent year-on-year to $9.6 billion in 2021-22.

Out of the 2.1 crore tonnes of rice shipment in 2021-22, India exported more than 1.7 crore tonnes of non-basmati rice and the rest of the volume was aromatic and long grain basmati rice, data from the Indian commerce ministry showed.

In terms of volume, Bangladesh, China, Benin, and Nepal are major export destinations of Indian rice.