Rice Slumps by Limit as Cambodia Ends Ban on Overseas Shipments

By Jae Hur and Luzi Ann Javier

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Rice futures tumbled by their daily limit for the second session as producers eased export bans, alleviating concerns that global supplies will fail to meet demand.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced yesterday that an export ban has been lifted, Chan Tong Yves, deputy head of the farm ministry, said today by phone from Phnom Penh. Vietnam and India said earlier this month they may ease export curbs.

The staple for half the world, which reached a record $25.07 on the Chicago Board of Trade on April 24, slumped 50 cents. The record prices for food, including palm oil and wheat, have stoked concern about shortages and caused riots from Haiti to Egypt.

``The Cambodian news has damped market sentiment,'' Takaki Shigemoto, an analyst with Tokyo-based commodity broker Okachi & Co., said by phone today. ``With major producers in Southeast Asia braced for harvesting bumper crops in the next couple of months, the global market sees more supplies.''

Rough rice for July delivery fell 2.5 percent to $19.85 per 100 pounds as of 11 a.m. in London. The price is still 88 percent higher than a year ago. The Chicago market, which fell 50 cents on May 23, was closed yesterday for a public holiday.

Cambodia would produce 6.8 million metric tons of unmilled rice this year after sufficient rains, compared with 6.7 million tons last year, the farm ministry's Chan Tong said.

The country has more than 1 million tons of rice available for sale overseas, the Financial Times said today, citing the Cambodian premier. The ban on exports was put in place in March, the report said.

Global Forecast

Global output of milled rice in 2008 will be 445.3 million tons, up 2.3 percent from last year's record 435.2 million tons, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said on May 22. Consumption will rise 2.4 percent, the agency said.

The Philippines, the world's largest rice importer, has failed this year, to fill state tenders for the grain, driving prices higher last month. The country imports about 2 million tons a year to plug a supply deficit.

A Philippine food company was the sole buyer today at a rice tender for private companies in Manila, the National Food Authority said. Uni-Agro Native Products Inc. was seeking 500 tons out of the total 141,440 tons of tariff-free imports on offer, Assistant Administrator Conrad Ibanez told reporters.

The Philippines may hold another government rice tender in December to make sure stockpiles in state-owned warehouses will not drop below the equivalent of 15 days' of consumption, Ibanez said. The Philippines consumes about 33,000 tons of rice a day.

`Soften Prices'

Cambodia's lifting of the nation's export ban ``will soften prices,'' Ibanez said. ``We'll import if September harvests are lower than last year.''

Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter, said on May 21 that a ban on new overseas shipments may be lifted from July and the harvest in the north of the country is ``much better'' than previously expected.

India, the world's second-biggest rice producer after China, may partly ease a ban on rice exports as the country is set to harvest a bumper crop, Commerce Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters on May 9. Output in the year ending June may reach a record 95.68 million tons, the farm ministry said April 22. That compares with 93.35 million tons produced a year earlier.

Pakistan, the fifth-biggest exporter, will permit shipments of 1 million tons because local needs have been met, Mohammad Azhar Akhtar, chairman of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan, said on May 16.

Japan is in talks with the Philippines, the world's largest rice importer, about shipments from Japan's stockpiles of overseas rice, according to a government official, who declined to be identified in remarks reported May 12.