KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has formed a committee to look into problems being faced by rice growers and to suggest measures to check falling rice exports.

The committee, to be headed by Sindh aAgriculture Minister Ali Nawaz Khan Mahar, has been also given the mandate to suggest ways and means for improving and enhancing rice cultivation.

A delegation of Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (Reap), headed by its chairman, Rafique Suleman, on Friday held a meeting with the Sindh CM and apprised him of falling rice prices in the world market and its impact on country’s rice exports.

The delegation members stressed the need for exploring Malaysian rice market as balance of trade is heavily tilted in favour of Malaysia from where palm oil is imported.

They demanded that the government should discuss possibilities of exporting 200,000 tonnes of Pakistani rice to Malaysia.

Similarly, they pointed out that if proper negotiations are made, around 500,000 to 700,000 tonnes of non-Basmati rice could be exported to China. The exporters said they can fetch better price in Indonesia and Iran.

The chief minister was also informed about rice exporters’ problem of power outages which result in closure of processing plants in Hawkesbay Industrial area.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2014