International trade in rice: recent developments and prospects.

Abstract

The rice International market has been dominated by two major tendencies in the 1990s, first a sharp rise in volumes and, second, a continued slide of international prices, both in real terms and relative to the other major cereals. In spite of the changes undergone, the international rice market continues to be regarded as “highly distorted”, “segmented”, “thin” and “volatile”. This note reviews the factors underlying each of these attributes and discusses whether they continue to cast a good representation of the current rice world market.