India could become rice importer by 2020 at current growth rate

An industry chamber today warned that India could become a net importer of rice by 2020 if it did not raise growth rate to 1.75 per cent and maintained it for next ten years.

Underlining the need to accelerate current growth rate of 1.18 per cent to 1.75 per cent consistently for a decade, Assocham said India's rice production would reach 108 million tonnes by 2020 against requirement of 118 million tonnes, turning the country into a net importer.

Situation is likely to worsen if faster growth in consumption over production continues in the future, warned Assocham president Sajjan Jindal while releasing the Rice Report 2009.

Quoting findings of the report, he said if remedial measures are not taken in a timely and targeted manner, it will challenge the country's self-sufficiency in rice. "Yield growth is likely to slowdown if the new high yielding varieties are not introduced in a time bound manner and efforts to improve the irrigation facilities are delayed." The report projected consumption of rice to grow at a rapid pace in view of the rise in population growth even if there is a slight decline in per capita consumption. A pronounced slowdown in growth will inevitably lead to insecurity and deficiency on food front, it added.

The findings said even if population growth declined to 1.6 per cent in the next decade and per capita consumption remained steady at current 78.5 kg per year, India will still require about 109 million tonnes of rice in 2020.

And if paddy acreage remained stagnant in the next decade and the country sustained the past decade's average rice yield growth of 1.18 per cent in the coming decade as well, rice production would grow to about 108 million tonnes.

Union Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday that domestic rice production this year is likely to fall by 10 million tonnes on account drought conditions in 246 districts, covering nearly half of the country. Deficient monsoon may result in shortfall in area coverage of paddy by about 5.7 million hectares as compared with last year and production of rice may be reduced by 10 million tonnes, he added.