March 7, 2011

Kazakhstan has no plans to hamper grain exports

Kazakhstan has no plan to limit or stop grain exports despite declining stocks and surging domestic prices, the chairman of the country's state grain body said.

Despite domestic grain prices rising as high as US$350 per tonne, Asylzhan Mamytbekov, chairman of KazAgro, said in a statement that the country can export 1.5 million tonnes of grain before next season.

Kazakhstan's grain stocks fell 7.4% in the month to February 1 to 8.645 million tonnes, according to the national statistics agency, including an 8.6% decline in milling grain inventories and a 15.5% drawdown in feed stocks.

One Kazakh grain market analyst said with the present rate of consumption of feed grain, the current stocks were unlikely to last until the beginning of the next marketing year on July 1.

Yet Mamytbekov remains sure that the government "does not have any prerequisites for the further limiting or closing of exports of grains and by-products," according to a statement.