"Shipments for rice exports have begun," said a dealer at one exporting firm. "Already three vessels carrying 60,000 tonnes of IRRI have left for for Indonesia, while another two are being loaded."

Pakistan won the Indonesian tender for 2,77,000 tonnes of IRRI variety in December 1998, but it had remained undelivered because of delays in opening of letters of credit until late last month.

But the dealer said the buying was unlikely to be sustained for a longer period because there was hardly any fresh demand for Pakistani rice elsewhere.

"Vietnam is giving us tough competition because their rates are lower than Pakistan's $210/215 per tonne," he said. Traders of basmati varieties said prices were likely to remainunchanged in the coming week because of low demand.

"Buying from the Middle East is slow because of availability of previous stock there," said Tariq Ghori, a dealer at MATCO Enterprises. But he said some exporters had made forward deals for May-June shipment.

He said exporters were worried that some local traders had quoted lower rates in a recent tender by Mauritius for 20,000 tonnes of basmati rice. "This dampened market sentiment," he added. Pakistan exported 8,47,764 tonnes of rice in the period from July to January 1999, compared to about 1.1 million tonnes in the same period a year earlier.

The country exported 2.055 million tonnes of rice in 1997/98 (July-June), compared to 1.767 million tonnes the previous year.

Pakistan expects a rice crop of 4.74 million tonnes this year, up from 1997/98's output of 4.325 million tonnes.