STABILISING ASEAN rice markets is a crucial concern for averting crises such as the 2007-08 global rice crisis. The current strategy towards this is by growing the size of rice reserves in the Asean+3 Emergency Rice Reserve (APTERR), although the APTERR has been critiqued for its small size relative to total demand and low utilisation.

A look into the stabilisation policies in currency markets shows that more important than size is the way the reserves are used to incentivise actors towards behaviour that reduces risk exposure. As such, the limited reserves in APTERR can be used for encouraging behaviours such as increasing transparency/reporting, increasing partner diversification, and addressing structural imbalances in agricultural production and consumption within countries.

…Jose Ma Luis P. Montesclaros is an associate research fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.