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Cambodian rice prices lower on plentiful supply

PHNOM PENH: Cambodian rice prices eased this week as supplies from the country's best harvest in three decades continued coming on the market, commerce and agriculture officials said on Friday.

Trade eased at the end of the week as Vietnamese buyers, who have been purchasing large amounts of Cambodian paddy, took time off to prepare for their traditional new year, they said.

"The price of rice has stayed low this week as more of the crop comes in," director of the commerce ministry's crop marketing office, Tes Eda, told Reuters.

The price of average-grade paddy in Phnom Penh this week fell to 300,000 riel ($78.90) a tonne compared with 310,000-320,000 riel last week, he said.

The export price of paddy on the Vietnamese border was 460,000 riel a tonne this week compared with 470,000 riel a tonne the previous week, he said.

Farmers from the northwest were transporting rice to sell to Vietnamese traders in Mekong river ports in the southeast, an agriculture official said.

Tes Eda estimated that Vietnamese traders had been buying several hundred tonnes of Cambodian paddy a day for sale on the domestic market there though trade slowed for the holiday.

Thai traders had been buying small amounts of top-quality, fragrant rice in the northwest of the country, he said.

Cambodia expects a bumper crop of 3.8 million tonnes of paddy this May-April crop year, equal to its best ever harvest in 1970, and leaving a surplus of 144,282 tonnes of milled rice for export, agriculture officials said.-Reuters