The heavy showers that ravaged Chennai city has hit rice business.
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Ballari: The heavy showers that ravaged Chennai city has hit rice business in the state’s ‘rice bowl’ leaving rice traders in the undivided Raichur district incurring a loss of Rs 2.80 crore per day. The transportation of high quality Sona Masuri rice from Koppal and Raichur districts to Tamil Nadu has been stalled due to heavy rains in the neighbouring state.
According to sources in Raichur district rice mill owners association, over 200 rice mills in the district, including Raichur city, used to supply about 1,000 tonnes (50 lorry loads) of rice to Tamil Nadu on a daily basis. The agents in Chennai used to procure Sona Masuri and other high quality rice from Raichur, Gangavati, Sindhanur and export the same to other countries.
The rice mill owners lament that local traders are not being able to get in touch with the agents in flood-ravaged Chennai. Hence, the supply of rice to Tamil Nadu has stopped. The rice mills in Raichur city alone used to transport at least 15 lorry loads (17 tonnes per load) to Chennai daily. The lorries have stopped plying due to heavy rain that lashed Chennai and coastal Tamil Nadu following a low pressure formation over Bay of Bengal.
Mr Papareddy, president of Raichur district rice mill owners association said that heavy rains in Tamil Nadu are causing a lot of hardship to mill owners here and workers dependent on the mills for their livelihood. According to official sources in the Raichur Chamber of Commerce and Industries (RCCI), rice producers and traders in the district have not been able to maximise profits as rice is being exported by traders in other states.
“Raichur is one of the major Sona Masuri rice producing districts in the country. Export traders in Chennai, Mumbai and other cities outside Karnataka export Sona Masuri, one of the two premium quality rice varieties in India, to various countries and earn huge profits. The local producers and traders are not evincing interest in the export trade as they do not know much about it,” sources said.
At this juncture, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have come to the rescue of rice traders and mill owners here as over 50 per cent of the paddy crop has been damaged due to below par monsoon in these two states. According to mill owners in the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh, the ready for harvest rice has been damaged due to inclement weather. So, there is a demand for rice from Andhra and Telangana. This has helped the rice mill owners recover the losses to a certain extent.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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