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Cambodia rice price firms, record harvest seen

PHNOM PENH: Cambodian rice prices firmed slightly this week as farmers held back stocks, Vietnamese traders returned to the market and Thai traders also bought up supplies, a commerce ministry official said on Friday.

The price of average-grade paddy in Phnom Penh this week rose to 310,000 riel ($81.50) per tonne compared with 300,000 riel last week, the director of the commerce ministry's crop marketing office, Tes Eda, told Reuters.

"The price is rising because less supplies are coming in. The harvest has nearly come to an end and farmers are keeping stocks in their barns," in expectation of better prices later, he said.

Vietnamese traders were again buying up supplies after trade fell off last week due to the Vietnamese lunar new year holiday, he said.

Vietnamese traders were estimated to be buying more than 400 tonnes of paddy a day this week, he said.

Thai traders, while buying less than the Vietnamese traders, were buying increasing amounts of top-grade, semi-processed rice from farmers in northwestern border provinces and sending it back across the border to mills in Thailand, he said.

Tes Eda said the price was expected to continue firming next week to around 320,000 riel per tonne.

An agriculture ministry official said the December-April dry season crop was coming along well and the country remained on course for a total harvest of 3.8 million tonnes, equal to Cambodia's best ever harvest in 1970.

"We have nothing to worry about this dry season, no pests, everything is going smoothly," senior agriculture official Kith Seng said.

"We expect more than 700,000 tonnes (of paddy) this dry season and a total of 3.8 million tonnes from both the rainy and dry seasons," he said. Paddy production last dry season was 636,000 tonnes.

The May-November wet season crop came in at 3.1 million tonnes of paddy compared with 2.87 million tonnes the previous year.

Cambodia expects to produce a surplus of 144,282 tonnes of milled rice for export this crop season.-Reuters