KARACHI, June 24: Pakistani rice prices were firm during the past week due to good local demand, but traders said on Monday higher domestic prices and falling stocks had halted exports.

They said falling stocks had forced local rice dealers to cover their positions as the new crop would not be available until September-October.

“Our season is over. Pakistani exporters are out of international market as there is no rice available,” said Haji Majeed, a rice exporter in Karachi.

Traders said lower-than-expected output from the latest crop had raised domestic prices and foreign buyers were not willing to pay high Pakistani export prices.

Pakistan has scaled down its rice output estimate for fiscal 2001-02 (July-June) to four million tons from 4.74 million tons because of irrigation water shortages during the growing season.

The country’s annual domestic rice consumption is around 2.3 million tons.

Majeed said local demand had pushed prices up to a point where Pakistani exporters could not match competitors offering IRRI varieties of rice on the international market from other countries.

“India is in the market with huge quantity and low prices, while our prices are much higher and also we have very limited quantity of rice available,” he added.

Majeed said India was quoting $135 per ton compared to Pakistan’s $180 per ton.

The main buyers of Pakistani rice are Iraq, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and several East African countries.

Dealers said prices of 100kg bags of IRRI-6 variety rice in the local market were quoted between Rs965 and Rs1,000.—Reuters