Pakistani rice exporters are looking at a rare opening in the American market after Washington kept a fifty percent levy on basmati rice from India while applying a far lower nineteen percent rate to shipments from Pakistan. The gap follows American punitive measures linked to India's energy and trade ties with Russia, which swept Indian electronics, medicines and basmati rice into a broad tariff net. Several Indian industries later won exemptions, but basmati rice did not. The timing favors Pakistan. The country shipped more than 772,725 tonnes of basmati in fiscal year 2024, earning 876.9 million dollars, up from 595,120 tonnes worth 650.4 million dollars the year before, according to the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan. The average export price per tonne climbed from 1,092.93 dollars to 1,134.86 dollars over the same period. America is already Pakistan's biggest basmati buyer. Between November 2023 and October 2024, the United States took twenty four percent of Pakistan's basmati exports across 1,519 shipments, ahead of Italy at fourteen percent and the United Kingdom at eleven percent, Volza's Global Trade platform reports. American demand for imported rice keeps rising: the Department of Agriculture says imports grew from seven percent of the domestic market in the 1993 and 1994 season to more than twenty five percent by 2022 and 2023, with aromatic Asian varieties making up over sixty percent of the total.
mwrana
October 9, 2026
