The Philippines has signaled rice exporting countries that it has ample rice stocks and will stop buying momentarily.

A couple of months ago, the Philippine demand for more of the grains sent prices soaring to over $1,000 per ton.

This time, price had gone down by 30 percent to a little over $730 per ton.

"The Philippines has signalled that it has ample rice stocks and may stop buying," Chookiat Ophaswongse, the president of Thai Rice Exporters Association, told Reuters.

"I see only Iran, which needs to buy every year but which hasn’t bought a single ton this year," he said.

Iran, one of Thailand’s major rice buyers, imports around 1 million tons each year, of which around 600,000 tons usually comes from Thailand.

Traders expect Iranian officials to come back to the market in August and September when prices tend to fall as supply in Thailand peaks with the harvest of one of its annual crops.

Thailand is expecting to harvest 7.6 million tons of paddy during the August-September period, up from around 4 million tons in the same period of last year, according to Agriculture Ministry data.

The Thai government’s rice stockpile has risen 22 percent since the start of a government program launched in June to support prices paid to farmers, a senior official said.

The government has bought 790,000 tons of paddy, equivalent to 474,000 tons of milled rice, pushing overall stocks to 2.57 million tons, up from 2.1 million tons in January, the official said.

"We are planning to release some of the stock very soon," the Government House official, who asked not to be named, said.

Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, tends to hold a large stockpile, the consequence of domestic price schemes that are launched most years.

In 2005, the stockpile was nearly 5 million tons, according to the Commerce Ministry, a major headache for the government due to storage costs and the losses it frequently makes when it releases the surplus onto the market.

His visits have included the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and China.

"After the state visits, there were talks between the Prime Minister and several ambassadors in Bangkok about rice deals," Suparat said.However, traders and industry officials said Iran was the most likely candidate.