We are pleased to send you the new issue of the FAO Rice Price Update. 

·         After posting a mild (0.7 percent) recovery in December 2018, the FAO All Rice Price Index (2002-04=100) reached 220.1 points in January 2019.  At that level, the Index stood 1.8 percent above its December value, but still 1.7 percent below levels registered a year earlier.

·         January’s Index increase was led by 4.1 percent rise in Japonica prices. These were buoyed by a series of Asian import tenders, launched in the context of tighter export availabilities and poor production prospects for drought-stricken Australia. The Aromatica Index also edged up in January, although subdued buying interest capped currency-led gains in this segment to around 1.2 percent. By contrast, a quiet pace of trade kept Indica quotations steady to mildly weaker for a second successive month.

·         Thai prices strengthened during January in tandem with a further Baht appreciation. After touching 26-month lows in December, Pakistani values also staged a modest recovery on the back of East African sales. Meanwhile, a fast pace of public domestic procurement and a slow progress of Rabi plantings promoted another advance in Indian Indica offers. By contrast, a dearth of fresh sales and promising prospects for the imminent 2019 winter-spring harvest caused prices in Viet Nam to slide by 7 percent to their lowest since May 2017. The undertone was also bearish in Cambodia and Myanmar, where news of the EU’s instatement of safeguard measures against Indica imports from these countries weighed on sentiment. In the Americas, deals to Latin American buyers sustained Indica quotations in the United States, while slow demand kept values stable in Brazil and Uruguay, or lowered them slightly as in the case of Argentina, despite seasonally tight availabilities and subdued prospects for forthcoming 2019 harvests in these countries.