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sian countries need to build up rice stocks as global supply may shrink due to growing demand from major buyers like China and India, which will eventually push up prices, according to global research house The Rice Trader.

'€œChina is still not on the pace to meet [annual purchase of] 4.5 million tons this year, but they will make it. The fact that they now only have 2.2 million tons suggests that they will buy aggressively,'€ said Jeremy Zwinger, the president and CEO of the California-based research institute.

China, now the world'€™s-biggest rice buyer, imported 4 million tons of rice last year, up from 3.2 million tons in 2013, according to data from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The country'€™s rice imports in 2014 set a new record for a fourth consecutive year. The dramatic increase rice demand from the world'€™s most populous nation began in 2007, when imports increased to more than seven times the average of the previous five years.

The Rice Trader also expects Indian rice stocks to jump to nearly 10 million tons this year. As of early May, India'€™s rice stocks had plunged by 22 percent to 22.23 million tons from the previous year, according to statistics from Food Corporation of India (FCI) issued recently.

Rice Trader data from five rice exporting countries '€” Thailand, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and the US '€” shows that overseas shipment sin 2014 reached historically high levels at 34.67 million tons, up 12.4 percent from 2013.

The potential of a long drought caused by El Niño would be another factor to watch, as it might pose a significant threat to production, Zwinger noted.

Scientists have warned that the world is on track for another year of record-setting heat, with temperatures having hit a new high in the first four months of this year.

Australia'€™s weather bureau has already declared the major event of El Niño, which is caused by a reversal of trade winds in the Pacific, causing ocean temperatures to rise.

Apart from bringing unseasonably dry conditions to Australia and India over the next several months, forecasters have also said El Niño could trigger famine in West Africa.

Zwinger said that over the next several months rice prices would stay at a low level on abundant supplies from rice-producing countries, particularly Thailand.

In the first two months of this year, Thai rice exports totaled 1.34 million tons, and if the trend is maintained, the country'€™s rice exports will reach 8.04 million tons, still much lower than 10.97 million tons exported in 2014, according to The Rice Trader.

Within such a buyer'€™s market, Zwinger recommended Asian countries, including China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, to buy overseas, as the situation might change into a seller'€™s market immediately, describing the current situation as a'€œtransition'€ moment.

'€œThe price now is very acceptable, especially with the risk that the oil price will go back [up, the risks of weather we keep seeing and the fact we had many years of lower production,'€ he said during Thai Rice Convention recently.

As of May 15, rice prices from key suppliers followed a downward trend from the past year. Thai'€™s 100 percent grade B rice price, for example, dipped by 3.75 percent to US$385 per ton, and India'€™s 5 percent broken rice price declined by 12.05 percent to $365 per ton, according to data compiled by The Rice Trader.

Indonesia'€™s state-owned logistics firm Bulog finance director Iryanto Hutagaol, however, said the government had no immediate plan to import rice, as at present, rice stocks at Bulog warehouses was sufficient, while production was good.

Indonesia, the world'€™s third-largest rice consumer, has delayed the planting season, which will extend the harvest season into June from the normal end period in April.