Thanks to a drop in the country’s marketable domestic rice supply, Thailand’s rice exporters are being forced to buy foreign supplies of the commodity in order to meet their monthly demands.
The Wall Street Journal reports that since 2011, Thailand’s rice exports have dropped by more than half. At present, Thai rice exporters are being forced to buy and sell more than 300,000 tons of rice each month from neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Pakistan.
This sharp decline in exports is being blamed mostly on the government’s rice-buying scheme, which has offered farmers high-than-market prices for their harvests.
The government’s current stockpile of nearly 14 million tons of rice pushes close to record-breaking levels.
Prior to last year, Thailand held the title of world’s largest rice exporter for a solid decade. It has since been eclipsed in this category by India and Vietnam.
