The Myanmar Rice Federation (MRF) said that rising rice prices in the domestic market was one of the factors of rice export decline.

On the other hand, the rising dollar exchange rate had also had an impact on the rice export so they presented this issue to the officials concerned, the MRF said.

The rice export trade figures released by MRF shows that out of this financial year’s export target of 2 million tonnes of rice and broken rice, only over 23% has materialized in the first half of this financial year.

In this fiscal year from April to the end of September, MRF said that they could export just over 460,000 tonnes of rice and broken rice and could earn US$210 million only, MRF announced.

MRF Chairman Ye Min Aung said that they would accelerate the rice and broken rice export in the last three months of this year, namely October, November and December.

They expect to export up to 700,000 tonnes of rice in this 3-month period.

The MRF trade figures show that rice export in this year was nearly 500,000 tonnes lower than the corresponding period in last year.

The 6-month period from October this year to March next year will be the strongest months for export and in this October alone the country earned over US$ 40 million from rice export.

Before the military coup, under the rule of the National League for Democracy-led government, the rice prices in the domestic markets were about 30,000 Kyats per bag (approx. 50 Kg) for Pawsan and around 29,000 Kyats per bag for Paw Kywe and then they soared up 4-fold after the coup.