Rice smuggling to Iran driving prices higher

Pakistan may have to import rice for the first time in its 60-year history as a serious threat to its food security looms, sources in the commodity trade said. Despite reaping rich harvest of all the major crops during the current fiscal year, the nation is faced with serious shortages in the market and therefore a threat to its food security.

Although Pakistan had imported almost all the food items in the past few decades, including wheat, this has never been the case with rice. So bountiful has been its harvest, the country never felt compelled to take recourse to imports.

But indications are that Pakistan may be forced to import Jasmine rice from Thailand in order to meet the domestic demand and overcome the shortage of good-quality rice.