Exporters urge Smeda to upgrade rice industry

KARACHI - The rice exporters have urged the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) to upgrade the rice industry as still many mills have orthodox system of paddy drying.

They said that many rice producing countries of the world have two kinds of grain dryer machines, the ventilating type and the circulating type dryer and some have the Far Infrared Technology (FIT) in their grain dryer machines to ensure the high quality of grains, increase the drying speed and reduce the fuel consumption in order to save the operation cost.

Some countries have also developed the advanced technology in rice husk furnace dryer and biomass furnace dryer to solve the problem of high oil price in the world with high capacity he said but unfortunately although Pakistan ranks amongst the leading rice producing country we lack technology and there is a technological gap which SMEDA should fill by upgrading the rice grains industry, President Unisame Zulfikar Thaver pointed out.

He said in Europe, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Bulgaria are using the technology and Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia and Costa Rica in Latin America have adopted this technology other countries which have this system are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Philippine, Malaysia, China, Taiwan and also Japan and Korea.

He said much loss is incurred every year due to moisture contents in the paddy and since the time gap between the harvesting and milling is sometimes extended due to the financial arrangements of the stakeholders the paddy is left to dry under orthodox systems and if there is unfavourable climate it affects it all the more.

He added that there is scope for entrepreneurs to install paddy-drying systems and this would be an industry between the growers and millers with handsome returns.