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Cambodian rice prices low on bumper crop

PHNOM PENH: Cambodian rice prices eased this week despite increased buying by traders from Vietnam as a bumper main crop came on to the market, a commerce ministry official said on Friday.

The average price of paddy in Phnom Penh this week fell to 320,000 riel ($84.20) a tonne compared with 330,000 riel ($86.85) last week, the director of the ministry's food department, Tes Eda, told Reuters.

"The price of our paddy is getting lower and lower because we're getting a lot more coming in from farmers," he said.

The price was expected to ease further to around 300,000 riel ($78.95) a tonne in the next few weeks despite active buying by Vietnamese traders, he said.

"More Vietnamese traders are coming to buy our rice as the price gets lower," he said.

Vietnamese traders were buying an estimated 200 tonnes of Cambodian paddy a day, compared with 100 tonnes per day last week, to meet domestic demand in Vietnam, he said.

Supplies of export quality rice in Vietnam have virtually run out and exporters there were expected to be sidelined until the end of March, dealers there said on Thursday.

Vietnamese traders usually buy rice in eastern Cambodian provinces along their border but were now travelling up to the northwestern rice-basket province of Battambang to buy up supplies of cheap paddy and ship it home by boat.

"Vietnamese business people are exporting a lot from Cambodia, as much as they can," Tes Eda said.

Thai traders in northwestern Cambodia were buying smaller amounts of top-quality paddy, he said.

Cambodia expects a bumper crop of 3.8 million tonnes of paddy this May-April crop year, equal to its best ever harvest in 1970, and leaving a surplus of 144,282 tonnes of milled rice for export, agriculture officials said. -Reuters