New Delhi, Sep 14: China is set to increase its rice imports from India. Beijing has already imported 4.76 lakh tons of 100 per cent broken rice from India between April and July this year. Indias total rice exports to China during the current financial year could be over 1 million tonnes.
Sample this. According to the All India Rice Exporters' Association, in 2018-19 India exported 951 tonnes but the figure shot up in 2020-21 to touch 33,1571 tonnes.
Heavy floods in China have affected foodgrain production. Large parts of crops were damaged due to heavy rains and flooding last year as well as this year.
Vinod Kaul, executive director of the association, told India Narrative that India, which will be in the rice harvest period next month, is ready to increase exports.
"Countries like China, Vietnam need a lot of broken rice, which is not only the staple grain but it is widely used for making rice wine and noodles and also the grain serves as bird feed. While these countries produce rice on their own, their requirements are also large," Kaul said.
China's Henan province - the second largest rice producer in the country - witnessed severe floods this year. This has brought significant damage to crops, not just rice but other agri-products such as maize and sweet potatoes. The province accounts for more than one-tenth of the country's total rice output.
While there have been several reports suggesting that India's rice exports may take a hit, Kaul said that during the April to June period India's rice exports increased by 112 per cent over the corresponding period in the previous year. However, there has been "some slowdown in exports growth" but despite that India's outbound shipment of the grain in the first four months of this financial year stood at 74 per cent.
Besides China, several other countries including Bangladesh and Vietnam have also been importing rice from India.
Vietnam also imported 3.81 lakh tonnes of broken rice from India for the first time during this period.
Punjab annually generates 20 million tonnes of paddy straw and this is normally set on fire to quickly clear the fields for the next crop, resulting in choking of the National Capital Region (NCR) in October and November.
Priyanka's remarks came after farmers on Tuesday evening vacated the railway tracks and highways in Punjab after the Amarinder Singh government accepted the demands of the sugarcane farmers.
The 'rebel' legislators reached Dehradun in the morning to apprise Rawat about the mood of the public against the Amarinder Singh-led government in the state. They, among 20-odd party legislators, have been demanding replacement of Amarinder Singh as he failed to fulfill the 2017 poll promises.
Rao also slammed Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for raking up 10-year-old allegations related to the mining scam in an attempt to put Congress leaders in the dock in pollbound Goa.
According to the customs department, one male passenger aged 27 years, flew in from Dubai by Emirates flight EK-544 was intercepted at exit gate and his baggage which were found to be unusually heavy were subjected for detailed examination.
According to the sources, the panel members were reported about the delay and red tapism in the bureaucracy which has been hampering the pace of development in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and many new schemes announced by the Union government were getting affected.
