Thailand's commerce Ministry has approved sales of a total of 820,615 MT of rice to exporters by tender as the government seeks to reduce its rice stockpiles to 2.5 million MT by the end of this year.

For the first nine months of this year, Thailand exported 6.44 million MT of rice, earning 79.47 billion baht. September shipments totalled 820,000 MT, a rise of more than 30% from August.