Thailand's commerce ministry said on Thursday it would start to sell rice stocks again next month after the military government suspended sales shortly after seizing power in May. "On the rice stocks, we will be able to sell some starting in August," Duangporn Rodphaya, acting director-general of the ministry's foreign trade department, told reporters. "There are many ways, including government-to-government deals. We do not have to wait for the rice warehouse inspections to finish."
The Thai junta launched a nation-wide inspection of rice warehouses last week to work out how much grain was stockpiled by the government it ousted in May and to check rice quality. Duangporn said the Ministry of Commerce estimated overall rice stocks in state warehouses at 18 million tonnes of milled rice. That matched the forecast of the military's rice inspection committee.
"We would consider selling around 500,000-600,000 tonnes of rice monthly. That would not be a very big amount so that the sales would not depress market prices," she said, adding that the Commerce Ministry would take about three years to release the 18 tonnes of stocks.
Duangporn said the Thai rice stocks sale and expectation of the El Nino weather pattern that would cut rice output in major producing nations, such as India, would help provide room for Thailand to export more rice of up to 10 million tonnes in 2014, up from 6.7 million tonnes in 2013. The forecast was close to record exports of 10.6 million tonnes in 2011. The Thai Rice Exporters Association, however, kept its 2014 Thai rice export forecast unchanged at 9.0 million tonnes.
