Panic buyers load up on rice supplies as India bans exports

India’s move to ban certain rice exports has sparked some panic buying in various countries, with videos on social media showing bags of the staple food flying off the shelves and long lines outside grocery stores.

From the US to Canada and Australia, reports of overseas Indians stocking up are going viral. Some shops have imposed buying limits, while others hiked prices to cash in on the frenzy. Indian restaurants worry about a shortage. 

Rice is vital to the diets of billions in Asia and Africa. India’s restrictions, which apply to shipments of non-basmati white rice, are aimed at controlling local prices, but they add to strains on global food markets that have already been roiled by bad weather and the worsening conflict in Ukraine.

“Over the past few days, people have started buying maybe twice as much rice as usual. So we had to restrict,” said Shishir Shaima, a manager of MGM Spices, an Indian grocery store in Surry Hills in Australia.  

The store is now allowing customers to buy only one 5-kilogram bag of rice each. “Some people get mad when we won’t let them buy more than one bag, but we won’t let them,” Shaima said. 

In the US, videos show people caught up in a buying frenzy. Bloomberg could not independently verify their authenticity. Some South Asian grocery stores in Toronto have also implemented buying restrictions and increased retail prices, according to CityNews. 

Govindasamy Jayabalan, President of the Malaysian Indian Restaurant Owners Association, said he’s concerned this will lead to a shortage of rice and increase the cost of making dishes such as thosai and rice vermicelli.

“We are very worried about this. Most of our restaurant customers are from the lower income groups,” he said. “It’s not that we want to increase food prices but this is putting us in a difficult situation.”