Nepal’srice bowl empty

SANGAM PRASAIN
KATHMANDU, OCT 04 -
Nepal’s precarious food security situation has been exposed with Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) being compelled to call global tender for the supply of rice

as local contractors failed to supply enough.

The NFC, for the first time, has called global tender for 20,000 tonnes of rice on Sept. 20. After its two attempts to fulfill the food requirement from the domestic market failed as a result of food deficit in the country, it chose to go for global tender. The situation turned worse after the Indian government also banned export of non-basmati rice.

According to a food security bulletin of World Food Programme in August, there is a total of 442,000 food insecure people in the districts including 409,200 in the mid and far western hilly and mountainous districts who are highly food insecure.

Last year, the agriculture ministry had estimated about 500,000 people remained food insecure. Paddy harvest in 2009-2010 was around 11 percent less than the preceding year, with production of 4.02 million tonnes against 4.52 million tonnes recorded the preceding year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. The WFP said that as a result of poor summer crop, the national edible cereal balance is estimated to be 316,465 MT deficit, which is 140 percent higher than the previous year and by far the largest deficit in a decade.

Bijay Dhoj Thapa, deputy general manager of NFC, said that the corporation called the global tender as the domestic market was unable to meet the NFC’s demand. He said that low production of food was the major reason that there was not enough food in the market. As per the recently called global tender, the suppliers have been given a time period of 45 days for submitting tender documents. Earlier, the NFC had called the latest tender at the local level in June for the supply of 2,500 tonnes of rice. But, the tender was cancelled as the price quoted by all bidders upped significantly compared to the amount maintained in the first bidding.

The lowest price for Mansuli rice maintained in Nepalgunj was Rs. 26,370 per tonne during the first bidding which climbed up to Rs. 33,285 rice in the second bidding, according to NFC. During the first tender called in February 2010, the local bidders could only supply 7,160 tonnes of rice although the contract was awarded for supplying 21,000 metric tonnes. “The failure to supply on the part of contractors was due to shortage of food in the domestic market,” said Roop Singh Bhandari, NFC’s procurement division chief.

Realizing the direness of food insecurity, the NFC is planning to stock 50,000 tonnes of rice as buffer stock. The buffer stock will be used to meet emergency requirements and control the market price.