Commerce may hold fourth rice auction

The aim is to clear out the government’s stockpiles while serving demand amid the low supplies in the market.
Duangporn Rodphaya, director-general of the Foreign Trade Department, said yesterday that the ministry will gradually release rice from its stocks via bidding.
The fourth round is expected to be for possibly about a million tonnes, she said.
The ministry held the third round for 1.2 million tonnes yesterday, which could draw many rice traders to join.
The 48 traders at the auction proposed to purchase 1.17 million tonnes of rice from 118 warehouses.
“The government is expected to generate good prices from this bidding or earn a total of Bt10 billion from this lot because demand is high and supply is low outside the harvest season,” she said.
The average bid for 5-per-cent white rice was Bt11,276 per tonne against the market price of Bt13,900, and for white broken rice A-1 Super was Bt7,879 per tonne versus Bt11,000.
The price proposed by rice traders for this bidding is quite good since the government’s rice has deteriorated in quality after years of storage in granaries.
The government will on Monday call a meeting of the rice-releasing committee to consider the bidding results and sell rice to the traders with the best bids.
If the government sells this rice lot, it will have about 10.2 million tonnes remaining in inventory.
According to the department, the current government has held 14 rounds of bidding for rice since May 2014.
It managed to dispose of a total of 5.4 million tonnes of rice worth Bt57.6 billion via the bidding.
The government has asked the Chinese government to purchase one million tonnes of rice from the new crop under a new government-to-government contract in order to reduce the glut of rice during the harvest season.
The deal will be negotiated again and finalised next month during the meeting between the Transport Ministry and the Chinese government.