January 18, 2006	Wednesday	Zilhaj 17, 1426

KARACHI, Jan 17: Pakistan’s domestic rice prices were steady over the past week, but are expected to decline because of lower than anticipated international demand and slow exporter buying, dealers said on Tuesday.

“The international demand for Pakistani rice has been low because of high domestic prices,” said a Karachi-based dealer.

“Our prices have dropped to $217 FOB per ton, but they should go down further to compete with the other countries.”

Both the local as well as export prices were likely to fall in the coming days, he said and added that exporters would be shipping around 200,000 tons of Irri-6 variety of rice to the Western African countries this month.—Reuters