ISLAMABAD – During visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to Qatar, the Qatarigovernment finally agreed to include Pakistan-origin rice in the tenderdocuments of the Central Tendering Committee, which falls directly underthe purview of Qatar’s Ministry of Economy and Commerce.
As a viable solution, a third-party inspection for the supply of ricethrough CTC tenders, and to take strict action against those found involvedin supplying substandard rice in future, will be offered to ensure thatquality rice are being exported to Qatar.
The lifting of the ban is expected to provide an additional $40-50 millionof rice exports to Qatar if the quality is maintained. Qatar annuallyimports 200,000 tonnes of rice.
It is pertinent to mention that over the years, rice has been Pakistan’smajor export product to Qatar. The exports were 80,000 to 100,000 tonnesper annum (worth $80-$90) million up to 2010-11, which has dropped to$20-$25 million per annum (21,000 tonnes) in the last five years.
The CTC, Qatar government, which procures for state-supplied subsidizedrice for Qatari citizens, had made its tender Indian-origin specificthereby effectively banning the import of any other origin rice includingPakistani rice in 2011-12.
The CTC issued tenders after every two months for supply of more than5,000MT of high-quality rice to the government of Qatar and the Pakistaniorigin rice was excluded from these tenders.
Therefore, Pakistani exporters/suppliers were deprived of supplying about30,000 to 40,000MT good quality rice to Qatar per annum. Reportedly, themain reason for this change was the substandard and low-quality Pakistanirice supplied by the exporters against the government tenders in 2011-12.The Indian rice exporters were the ultimate beneficiaries of this situationand Indian rice exports to Qatar reached 142,000 tonnes in 2017 from 18,774tonnes in 2011.