Be prepared for higher prices: rice traders

Be prepared for higher prices: rice traders
eKantipur, 28-Apr-08

Nepali consumers staggering under mounting food prices should brace themselves for another rise in the price of rice, said traders.

They said that as Indian security forces had been intensifying border patrols, informal rice imports had slowed to a trickle. Nepali merchants have been bringing in grain through informal channels in the porous border after India stopped its export.

The traders also chided the government for not lobbying the Indian government to resume rice shipments to Nepal. India slapped a ban on rice exports in a bid to arrest rising inflation.

The local price of rice has gone up 25 percent compared to a year earlier, said traders.

Ganesh Lath, president of the Birgunj Chamber of Commerce, predicted that prices would keep shooting up until mid-September.

He said consumers wouldn't have been put in such a difficulty if the government had tried to persuade the Indian government through diplomatic channels to resume rice exports to Nepal.

The Birgunj Office of Nepal Rastra Bank said that prices would stay on an upward trajectory until the embargo was revoked. According to its findings, local rice production fulfills only 65 percent of demand.

An official at Birgunj Customs said no rice has come in from India from last October. Before the ban, 26,448 tons of paddy and 3,276 tons of rice were imported in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.