Pakistan's rice export to China in the first three quarters of this year surpassed US$421.94 million with a volume of 1,111,352.57 tons (more than one million tonnes), for the first time in history, Gwadar Pro reported on Friday quoting China's General Administration of Customs. The Customs' Data showed that during the first nine months of 2022, bilateral trade increased significantly and China imported more than one million tons of different types of rice increasing 45 % while last year in the same period it was more than 674,646.876 tons by volume, worth $290 million an increase of $131.91 million from 2021. According to GACC, Pakistan’s broken rice (commodity code: 10064020) export to China has crossed US$ 159.72million, increasing by 80% as compared to last year’s US$ 87.75 million in the same period, with the exported volume growing 38% from 401,867.79 tons last year in the same period tons to 491,678.15 tons.

The GACC data showed that in the first nine months of 2022, China imported more than 4,971,644.621 tons of three different types of rice worth US$ 2.05 billion, increasing 19% by volume from last year’s 3452523.288 tons in the same period worth $1.55 billion from the globe.  The main sources of rice imports are Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The ex-Commercial Counselor Pakistan Embassy in Beijing, Badar uz Zaman told Gwadar Pro that Pakistan has set a target of one million tons of rice export to China this year which is achieved much earlier, and that if it were not for the flood in Pakistan, rice export to China would have doubled the existing amount. Zaheer Ahmad, a rice exporter to China told Gwadar Pro that Pakistan has high-quality varieties of rice, ample young labour, large fertile land, and good environmental conditions for agriculture but due to a lack of technologies previously the low average yield and degraded seeds were the main reason of less export to China and other countries.

"Natural disasters are the key problems. Recently we are facing flood which destroyed more than 45% of crops and drought is probably the biggest abiotic stress Pakistani farmers face every year while much country's planting area is affected by salinisation which can be solved through the latest technologies and techniques used in the field of rice production", he stated. He further said that years ago, only Basmati rice was an important export earner in Pakistan but broken rice export to China helped Pakistan increase its export in this field, adding that Pakistanis are thankful to China which provided the latest technology in this field like colour sorting machines and modern seeds which help out more yield per arc and also duty-free access in the Chinese market. Zaheer hopes that China will also remove the quota system for Pakistani exporters and will increase the number of exporters from Pakistan, especially small enterprises. It is to be noted that in 2021 Pakistan exported about 973,000 tons of rice worth US$437 million to China and the total number of Pakistani companies in the approved General Administration of Customs P.R of China list is 53.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan-INP