Over the past two months, India has removed several of its restrictions affecting rice exports, some in place since September 2022. This is welcome news for rice importing countries, which for the past year have had to seek alternative suppliers at significantly elevated prices.
This post—following up on previous assessments of the situation from July 2024, February 2024, October 2023, and July 2023—summarizes recent actions, examines recent trade trends, and evaluates the impact of the restrictions on importing countries of Africa, a region that typically receives over half of India’s rice exports. It also briefly examines the impact of the export restrictions on domestic rice prices in India.
Status of India rice trade restrictions
Through much of 2022, markets for wheat, maize, and oilseeds were seeing record high prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, yet the rice market was generally calm. Large global supplies and the lack of any direct supply shock related to the Ukraine conflict left rice relatively immune to the price spikes seen with other commodities. But rice prices began to rise in late 2022, due in part to widespread flooding in Pakistan and growing concerns in South and Southeast Asia that forecasts of a strong El Niño in 2023 would lead to drought and sharply reduce rice crops.
Partly in response to higher global rice prices, the Indian government implemented a number of trade restrictions in September 2022 aimed at keeping domestic supplies high and prices down. These included additional export duties on unhusked rice (both white and brown), additional duties on non-basmati white rice (excluding parboiled rice), and a ban on broken rice exports (Table 1). Twelve months later, with rising food inflation and the Modi government facing general elections in spring 2024, further restrictions were placed on rice exports including an export ban on non-basmati white rice (excluding parboiled rice), a 20% duty on parboiled rice, and a minimum export price (MEP) for basmati rice.