Rice Price History: Monthly Global Price Since 2010

Rice is the staple food for over half the world’s population, and its international price is dominated by Asia: India alone supplies around 40% of world exports. This dataset reproduces the World Bank Pink Sheet benchmark for Thai white rice (5% broken, FOB Bangkok), a monthly average in US dollars per metric ton, from May 2010.

Dataset: Rice Price (2010–2026) · Updated 2026-10-01

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source: World Bank, Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet) · CC BY 4.0

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns. Each row represents one calendar month.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats, with monthly observations since May 2010.

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source Data Access: World Bank Pink Sheet

The underlying series is the “Rice, Thai 5%” column of the Monthly Prices sheet in the World Bank’s Commodity Price Data, known as the Pink Sheet. The World Bank publishes it as a monthly Excel workbook on its commodity markets page, under a CC BY 4.0 licence that requires attribution to the World Bank.

The Eco3min dataset reproduces that column unmodified from May 2010, in US dollars per metric ton, in a stable CSV with a fixed column name for direct use in Python, R or any data pipeline. The URL never changes, which makes it suitable for automated scripts.

Direct CSV Access: Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/rice-price.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/rice-price.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.head())
print(df["rice_price"].describe())

df.plot(x="date", y="rice_price", title="Rice Price", legend=False)

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/rice-price.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$rice_price)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL, no download or API key required.

Methodology

The World Bank reports the rice price in US dollars per metric ton for Thai white rice, 5% broken, milled, government standard, FOB Bangkok. The quote is an indicative price built from weekly surveys of export transactions.

Values are monthly averages, which smooth the intra-month swings visible in daily futures and physical quotes. The file begins in May 2010; the World Bank column itself starts in January 1960.

An Eco3min pipeline on GitHub Actions reads the Pink Sheet workbook after each monthly release, keeps the column unmodified and regenerates the CSV, Excel and JSON files and the page metadata. The World Bank updates the Pink Sheet on the second business day of each month.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

The Pink Sheet price is a widely cited reference for the physical market. A few provider-specific points matter when using this series.

• Release latency. The World Bank publishes the Pink Sheet on the second business day of each month, with the average of the month just ended. Eco3min refreshes the file after each release. The series is not a real-time price.
• Monthly average vs futures spot. This series is a monthly average. It will differ from any single exchange settlement, and a monthly average necessarily understates intra-month peaks.
• Revisions. Prices are market-derived and are not revised like survey-based macro series, but the World Bank can correct recent months or replace a series, and it lists those changes in the notes of the Pink Sheet workbook.
• Source change on 30 September 2026. Until that date this file reproduced another publisher’s series; the whole history was then rebuilt from the Pink Sheet column, so figures downloaded earlier can differ (median gap of about 4% over the common period).
• Alternative sources. The Pink Sheet also publishes Thai 25% broken, Thai A.1 and Viet Namese 5% quotes, and CBOT lists rough-rice futures. The World Bank compiles its Thai 5% quote from commercial price reporters and the US Department of Agriculture.

Common Pitfalls When Using This Series

1. Confusing nominal and real prices. This series is nominal. Comparing a 2010 reading to a recent one without adjusting for cumulative inflation overstates the real change. Deflating by CPI gives the true purchasing-power move.
2. Reading the monthly average as a market price. Headlines quote exchange futures; this dataset reports the monthly benchmark average. The two diverge most during fast-moving rallies.
3. Unit confusion. This series is an export FOB quote for Thai 5% broken white rice, not a futures price; it differs from US CBOT rough-rice futures and from Indian or Vietnamese export quotes.

Historical Regimes

2010–2013: Post-crisis plateau. The 2008 export-restriction crisis, which precedes this file, more than doubled the Thai price in the World Bank workbook (about $380 per ton in January 2008, $907 in April). From 2010 the benchmark stayed high, peaking at about $620 in November 2011, then eased to about $440 by November 2013.

2014–2019: Low and stable. Ample Asian stocks, especially in India and Thailand, held the Thai benchmark between about $360 and $460 per ton.

2020–2021: Pandemic firmness. Covid logistics and stockpiling lifted the price from about $430 per ton in December 2019 to about $560 in April 2020, before it eased back to $400 in September 2021.

2022–2024: India restricts. India phased in export curbs from 2022 and banned non-basmati white rice in July 2023. With El Niño threatening output, the Thai benchmark rose over 20% between June and August 2023, to its highest since 2008, and peaked at $660 per ton in January 2024.

2024–2026: Ban lifted, correction. India lifted the non-basmati ban in September 2024 with a $490-per-ton floor, and prices fell back as Indian stocks proved ample, to about $360 per ton in October 2025, the lowest since 2007. The benchmark then recovered to about $470 by August 2026.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

Commodity Price Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min commodity price repository: energy, metals, agricultural softs and grains, most of them from the World Bank Pink Sheet.

Explore the Commodity Price Hub

Sources

• World Bank: Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), Monthly Prices, column “Rice, Thai 5%” (CC BY 4.0)
• Thai 5% broken white rice export quotations, FOB Bangkok (weekly survey of export transactions), the market basis of the Pink Sheet series

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). Rice Price: Global Monthly Price (2010-2026). Source: World Bank, Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), CC BY 4.0.<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/rice-price-history-dataset/