Drought prompts cut to forecast for 2019 rice exports
With the country hit by drought, the Thai Rice Exporters Association has reduced its 2019 forecast for rice exports from 9.5 million tonnes to 9 million tonnes, the association’s president Charoen Laothammatas said on Wednesday.
For the first half of the year, rice exports came to 4.36 million tonnes, down 19.6 per cent from the same period of last year, when 5.42 million tonnes were shipped, he said.
He said orders for rice in the global market had dropped in the first half of this year, although orders in the second half should be higher than in the first six months. The effects of the drought will directly impact the production capacity in the market.
“If the drought still persists into August, that would further impact rice production and may result in the year’s exports being lower than our estimate of 9 million tonnes. We may to revise the figure again,” Charoen said.
