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New Delhi: India will decide by June whether to allow limited rice exports to some neighbouring states which have called for shipments to resume, but has no plans to significantly relax export curbs soon, a top food ministry official said.
India, the world's second-biggest rice exporter in 2007, began imposing restrictions on overseas sales last year.
It finally banned non-basmati shipments in March, one of a series of protectionist measures that triggered a wave of panic buying, causing benchmark Thai prices to cross $1,000.
"There are some requests from certain countries at diplomatic levels," T. Nand Kumar, the country's food secretary, said, the first time an Indian official has acknowledged pressure from other governments to resume sales. "I suppose they will be looked at rather than an open thing on exports."
Anxiety
The pressure underscores the growing anxiety around the world over food supplies at a time when the price of most staple crops has doubled or more in the past year, fuelled in part by suppliers moving to fight domestic inflation by forcing farmers and traders to keep more supplies at home.
"There are so many requests pending. We have to take a very close look at what is available," Kumar said, adding that the sales volumes would be small, totalling much less than one million tonnes.
He declined to specify the countries, but said they were either neighbours or countries with which India had a "strategic interest".
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