INTRODUCTION

Caustic policy debates have raged over the direction of the rice sector in Southeast Asia. The clashing views of governments, opposition parties, donors, international financial institutions, academics, consumer groups, private traders, rural activists and paddy cultivators have contributed to the rancour, although these actors are of uneven clout. One principal fault line pits the policy prescription of liberalization against protectionism. This is especially acute in countries in the region that are significant rice producers but import regularly due to cultivation totals that fall short of national requirements. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines compose this special group of importers. Annual production figures vary, but even with the occasional bumper harvest that can lift cultivation totals to nearly meet consumer demand, total national requirements typically encompass additional supplies for filling public stockpiles. Governments draw from these reserves amid price surges or in cases of emergency such as drought, pest infestation, storms and floods that occur with regularity in the region. Although these net importers grow the vast majority of their rice requirements domestically—customarily, the closest to reaching selfsufficiency in rice is Indonesia (93–99 per cent), followed by the Philippines (85–95 per cent), and then Malaysia (59–75 per cent) (Otsuka 2021, Figure 4, p. 326)—the combined population of these countries is large. It amounts to about 425 million people. As such, together these governments acquire roughly 4.2 million metric tonnes of foreign rice each year, at a very approximate cost of US$1.68 billion on average.

Pro-market advocates would prefer to see higher volumes of rice imports in these countries (and private traders, not governments, in the main do the purchasing). Why? Chiefly because more imports are thought to be capable of bringing down the high price of rice in these rice-deficit countries. Rather persistently their prices exceed those of their rice export counterparts in mainland Southeast Asia, sometimes as much as a factor of two to three times. The reasons behind high costs for net importers can be summed by two factors. First are policy choices, which include heavy government intervention in the sector exemplified by the political and financial support of food parastatals that monopolize the import business (Rashid, Gulati, and Cummings 2008).