April 29, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 22, 1429

LARKANA, April 28: The Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) has opposed government’s policy of banning export of coarse rice commonly known as IRRI-6 and feared it would cast negative impact on the future crop.

Vice-president of SAB, Gada Hussain Mahesar, in a letter to the prime minister, federal ministers for finance, commerce, agriculture and food on Monday, criticised the government for ignoring the concerned stake holders while framing ‘unilateral’ policies.

He said 2.5 million tonnes of rice are produced annually from 2.45 million acres of land in Sindh and Balochistan where 1000 rice mills are operating. He pointed out that 90 per cent area was used for producing IRRI-6 variety of rice for it is the high temperature resisting variety and only on 10 per cent land was used for growing other varieties of rice.

“We export more than 60 per cent of our rice production and earn more than 450 million US Dollars annually’ he said and added only 40 per cent production was used for seeds, animals, poultry feeds while little quantity is consumed as food locally.

Thailand and Vietnam are the big competitors of IRR-6 rice in the world market and if we commit mistake of imposing ban on export, we lose the international market, he apprehended.

Also Africa, Indonesia and Philippines are good buyers of unprocessed coarse rice.

He said under the circumstances the coming crop would adversely be affected as market would collapse due to banning export and growers could not be able to take risk to buy expensive fertilisers and pesticides with the result of harvesting poor rice cop in 2008-09. He appealed the government to avoid devising such a policy that would not favour growers, rice industry and country’s economy.