Miller Magazine Issue: 118 October 2019

59 COVER STORY MILLER / OCTOBER 2019 12 - 14 November 2019 InterContinental Geneva, Switzerland globalgrainevents.com/geneva Keynote address already confirmed by DAN BASSE , giving you his 12-month forecasts NEW: Digitalisation Workshop day looking into all factors and impacts of digitalising trade Get the Super Early Bird rate & SAVE MINIMUM £400 and North & Central America. While the US remains the world’s dominant exporter, supplying about one-quarter of the world’s import needs, market share has been lost to Russia, Ukraine and Argentina in recent years. Owing to a completely different market structure, the IGC’s analysis of rice supply and demand fun- damentals is typically kept separate from wheat and coarse grains. Global rice production in 2019/20 is anticipated to be broadly unchanged from the pri- or year, at 500m t (milled basis) as declines in some key producers in Asia, namely China, India and Thai- land, are broadly offset by increases in other regional producers and elsewhere. While output in India and Thailand may decrease from 2018/19 on unfavoura- ble conditions during the main crop planting periods, China’s fall will be driven by policy changes aiming to curtail burdensome stocks and re-balance supply and demand, following a decade in which inventories are estimated to have more than doubled amid supportive government programmes. These policy changes have been felt in the world mar- ket over the last year, with competitively price Chinese supplies a growing presence in several key destinations. Perhaps most significantly has been a sharp increase in long grain dispatches to sub-Saharan Africa, yet sizea- ble medium grain exports have also been noted in sev- eral markets, including Turkey, where Chinese rice has largely replaced imports from the USA. In contrast to the uptick in China’s exports, shipments from the two leading exporters, Thailand and India, are set to post sharp y/y falls in 2019 (January/December) amid slower regional demand, with Bangladesh, Indonesia and China all set to buy less than during the prior year. Assum- ing ample availabilities of competitively priced supplies, global trade in 2020 is anticipated to rebound by 4% y/y to 46.5m t, just short of 2017’s peak, with sizeable dis- patches of Chinese rice expected to again feature.