NEW DELHI, JULY 20: The food ministry has proposed restrictions on exports of non-basmati rice in an effort to overcome any supply shortage situation in the wake of dwindling stocks, official sources said today."The food ministry has proposed to the cabinet restrictions on exports of non-basmati rice. Cabinet is likely to take it up any time," the sources told PTI on condition of anonymity.Though total foodgrain stock was much above the revised stock norm, it was mainly due to the record procurement of wheat this year. As on July 1, foodgrain stocks was 33.35 million tonnes with wheat making up 22.20 million tonnes, rice 11.13 million tonnes and coarse grains 2,000 tonnes.This against a norm of 10 million tonnes for rice and 14.30 million tonnes for wheat. The sources said the proposal was made by food ministry in view of record exports during the last financial year leading to lower procurement."Procurement has stopped since June and of the total rice stock, one month requirement for each statewould have been exhausted," they said.Food ministry officials, when contacted, said there was nothing to panic on the rice situation and the stocks were adequate to meet the demand.Food ministry authorities said there was cause for concern in April when the stocks were below the norms but since then inventories had been built up. "We have about 10.8 million tonnes against the norm of 10 million tonnes," the authorities said.Agriculture ministry authorities said the situation was quite under control especially after rice exports started to decline since the beginning of this year. "There should be no problem on rice availability. Exports are lower than last year and Bangladesh, our primary buying source, has reported good harvest in April," they said.India's rice production this year is estimated to be around 85 million tonnes against 82.30 million last year. Registration for non-basmati rice exports in the country have slid sharply in the first quarter of the current fiscal by nearly half to 5.43lakh tonnes against 12.79 lakh tonnes during the same period a year ago.The sharp decline is against a record exports of 46.30 lakh tonnes of non-basmati rice during last fiscal fetching Rs 6,190.70 crore. This was mainly due to shortage of rice in the global market in view of the "el nino" warm water effect causing drought in rice producing countries.The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has predicted that India's rice exports would decline to about 20 lakh tonnes, including that of basmati shipments, on production recovery and plentiful supply. Official sources said another problem in availability of rice was that some of the mills were yet to mill paddy procured through relaxed specifications."States are not ready to buy the relaxed specification rice and millers are not taking any chance to go ahead with their milling operations," they said.Government had relaxed the specification for rice procurement last year after unseasonal rainfall in parts of north India, especially Punjab andHaryana.
