Non-basmati rice exports cross $6 billion mark in FY22

India's non-basmati rice exports grew 109% from $2,925 million in the financial year 2013-14 to $6,115 million in FY 2021-22, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said on Wednesday.

India had exported non-basmati rice worth $2,015 million in 2019-20, which rose to $4,799 million in 2020-21 and $6,115 million in 2021-22, according to data released by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) .

"In collaboration with our foreign missions, we have coordinated development of logistics as well as focus on production of quality produce, which has boosted India’s rice exports prospects," M Angamuthu, chairman of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), said.

West African country Benin is one of the major importers of non-basmati rice from India. Other destination countries are Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Cote D’Ivoire, Togo, Senegal, Guinea, Vietnam, Djibouti, Madagascar, Cameroon, Somalia, Malaysia, Liberia and the UAE among others.

India continues to expand its rice exports footprint in the African, Asian and European Union markets. The robust global demand also helped India’s growth in rice exports.

In 2020-21, India shipped non-basmati rice to nine countries — Timor-Leste, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Eswatini, Myanmar and Nicaragua, where exports were carried out for the first time or earlier the shipment was smaller in volume.

India’s thrust on expanding port handling infrastructure, development of value chain involving key stakeholders along with efforts to explore new opportunities in countries or markets for rice exports in the last couple of years have led to a huge spike in rice exports, the ministry said.

The major rice producing states are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Assam, and Haryana.

As per second Advance Estimates for 2021-22, the total production of rice during 2021-22 is estimated at record 127.93 million tonnes, which is higher by 11.49 million tonnes than the last five years’ average production of 116.44 million tonnes.

Total food grain production in the country is estimated at record 316.06 million tonnes which is higher by 5.32 million tonnes than the production of food grain during 2020-21.

India is the world’s second-largest rice producer after China. The record exports is expected to enable the rice producers to reduce their stocks and also benefit the farmers as the increased demand for Indian rice is likely to improve their realisations.