India prohibits non-basmati white rice exports (DGFT Notification 20/2023)

Mechanism

The DGFT notification is issued under powers conferred by section 3 of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act 1992 read with the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, and operates by amending the entry against HS code 1006 30 90 ("Semi-milled or wholly milled rice, whether or not polished or glazed: Other") in Schedule 2 of the ITC(HS) Export Policy from "Free" to "Prohibited". The notification took effect on the date of issue. The ban did not extend to:

• Basmati rice (HS 1006 30 20)
• Parboiled non-basmati rice (HS 1006 30 10) — already subject to a 20%

export duty since August 2023

• Broken rice (HS 1006 40 00) — already prohibited from export under

DGFT Notification 31/2022 of September 2022

Two narrow carve-outs preserved scope for the executive: shipments already loaded onto vessels with shipping bills in the customs system prior to 20 July, and government-to-government consignments approved on case-by-case food-security grounds (used in 2023-24 for Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Mauritius, Singapore, UAE, and several African countries).

Downstream implications

• Global rice trade structural shock. India accounted for roughly

40% of global rice exports in 2022 (~22 Mt of ~55 Mt traded); the non-basmati-white + broken-rice bans together removed close to half of India's exports from the world market. International rice reference prices (Thai 5% broken FOB) rose ~30% in the four months following the ban.

• EM food-import exposure. Largest hits in West Africa (Senegal,

Côte d'Ivoire, Benin), Bangladesh, the Philippines, and parts of the Middle East. Several African importers shifted to Thai, Vietnamese, and Pakistani origin at materially higher cost.

• Sequence of additional restrictions. The July 2023 ban was the

first in a sequence: 25 August 2023 added a 20% export duty on parboiled rice, and 27 October 2023 imposed a USD 1200/t MEP on basmati rice. The package was unwound only after the 2024 monsoon produced a record kharif harvest.

• Agriculture is a missing class in the IPTM register. This is the

first agricultural-commodity export-ban filing — distinct from the EM mineral-export-ban cluster (Indonesia nickel/bauxite/copper, DRC cobalt, Zimbabwe lithium, Chile lithium strategy) in motivation (food-security, anti-inflation) rather than upstream value-add capture.

Open questions

• Did the ban have a measurable effect on Indian retail rice CPI in

H2 2023, or did the response operate primarily through the parallel parboiled-rice duty and basmati MEP?

• Severity sits at 4 rather than 5 because the carve-out for

government-to-government supply preserved a sovereign-discretion channel and the ban was clearly framed as cyclical (timed to monsoon + election cycle) rather than structural; if the 2025 monsoon triggers a re-imposition, severity should be revisited.