The News
Potential of rice products export to Singapore
Singapore is a hard and demanding market. Singapore's rice market is small but it requires a variety of rice such as hommali brown rice, brown rice, glutinous rice, japonica rice, parboiled rice, hommali white rice, broken rice, and jasmine rice. Currently, Viet Nam and Thailand share market share of the jasmine rice, but they are facing stiff competition from new entrants such as Myanmar and Cambodia. Thailand and India is still strong in parboiled rice, japonica rice, and hommali rice.
Singapore is a hard and demanding market. Singapore's rice market is small but it requires a variety of rice such as hommali brown rice, brown rice, glutinous rice, japonica rice, parboiled rice, hommali white rice, broken rice, and jasmine rice. Currently, Viet Nam and Thailand share market share of the jasmine rice, but they are facing stiff competition from new entrants such as Myanmar and Cambodia. Thailand and India is still strong in parboiled rice, japonica rice, and hommali rice.
Singapore's rice market is small but it requires a variety of rice such as hommali brown rice, brown rice, glutinous rice, japonica rice, parboiled rice, hommali white rice, broken rice, and jasmine rice. Currently, Viet Nam and Thailand share market share of the jasmine rice, but they are facing stiff competition from new entrants such as Myanmar and Cambodia. Thailand and India is still strong in parboiled rice, japonica rice, and hommali rice.
In terms of market characteristics, Singapore is a hard and demanding market. Singaporean rice importers also often have price and partners considerations; preferring an emerging market if the price is competitive.
According to Enterprise Singapore, the first quarter of 2022 continues to witness a sharp decline in both quantity and value of Singapore's rice imports. The main imported rice products of Singapore are brown rice, glutinous rice, parboiled rice and white rice. In the first quarter of 2022, 5/7 main imported rice groups decreased by double digits, such as Homali brown rice (decreased 32.92%), regular brown rice (decreased 13.68%), sticky rice (decreased 58.65%), parboiled rice (decreased 24.53%) and broken rice (decreased 9.78%). Only Homali white rice and plain white rice increased slightly, respectively 2.59%, 0.55% (in value), and 20.46%, 3.41% (in volume). The decline was caused by a sharp drop in the demand for rice imports compared to the same period in 2021 (in 2021 Singapore imports spiked due to concerns about supply chain disruptions). Singapore's main rice import partners are Thailand, India and Viet Nam, sharing the top three with a total of 89.42% of Singapore's rice market share.
According to statistic from the Viet Nam trade office in Singapore, Viet Nam's rice exports to the Singapore in the first quarter of 2022 only reach about 11.8 million USD, decreased 9.32% compared to the same period in 2021 (according to the Statistic of the Viet Nam Custom, Vietnam's rice exports to Singapore in the first quarter of 2022 reached 11.9 million USD, decreased 17.5%), there are 4/7 main export rice products witness the negative growth, 2/7 items have no export data. Only broken rice witnesses a good increase, up to 131,98%.
Although Singapore's rice import turnover decreased sharply but the import from India, Pakistan and Australia still witnessed positive growth of 2.88%, 83.49% and 309.9% respectively because Singaporeans have stable demand for japonica and parboiled rice of Indian. This is also an opportunity for Vietnamese rice can increase market share because the price of Vietnamese japonica ricc is very competitive compared to Japan and Taiwan.
In general, the Singapore market's rice demand is not large but stable at 252-300 million USD of annual import value. The opportunity to increase the market share and value of Vietnam's rice exports depends largely on the decision of the importer and the internal demand. So far Vietnamese exporters have not done any any promotional program to actively influence the perception and tastes of Singaporean customers.