Data from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) shows that the nation has experienced a net import of wheat, corn and rice. It imported about 13.17 million tons of grains in 2012, of which about 3.42 million tons were wheat, 5.15 millions were corn and 2.09 million tons were rice, each. And in the first four months of this year, it imported one million tons of paddy and rice, up 83.6 percent from a year ago.
An industry observer pointed out that the nation had been the biggest paddy importer in the world and the annual import volume stood at four to five million tons currently. Actually, absolute import of rive of the nation was not large, but rice firms in some southern segmented markets were stilly badly affected.
A researcher at the MoA said that rice price overseas was much lower than that in the domestic market. In addition, the tariff rate was very low. Under such an environment, the nation saw the import of wheat, corn and rice increase sharply and this directly caused inventory of grain firms in the market to continue rising.
A top executive with a Hunan-based rice firm disclosed in an interview not long ago that the price of rice imported from Vietnam, Pakistan and Burma was CNY 3.44 per kilo, but that of rice produced locally reached CNY 3.6 to CNY 3.8 per kilo.
The MoA researcher reiterated that actually, the price of cotton overseas was also much lower than that in the domestic market. Cotton price in the market hit CNY 19,000 per ton currently, CNY 4,000 to CNY 5,000 more than that of imported one. The price spread once hit CNY 6,000 per ton last year. Hurt by this, days of cotton-oriented textile firms in the market was quit hard. And in order to ease pressure, they cast eye on imported cotton in succession.
The industry observer stressed that this had a close tie with too low rate of related tariffs. Available information showed that the average rate of tariffs on agricultural products globally was 62 percent currently, with the maximum even exceeding 1,000 percent. However, the figure stood at only 15.2 percent in the Chinese mainland, accounting for less than one fourth of the global one. There would be no doubt that the nation would experience a net import of more major grains in the near future provided that it did not take moves as soon as possible.
(USD 1 = CNY 6.15)
