April 1, 2009

Russia needs to export at least 1.2 million tonnes of grain from its intervention stocks before July 1 to make room for storing the new crop, Arkadiy Zlochevsky, President of trade association the Russian Grain Union told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday (March 31).

Speaking on the sidelines of the International Grain Trading conference, Zlochevsky said intervention storage is 70 percent full and around 5 million tonnes of wheat has already been bought by Russia's government purchasing programme.

"Almost all of the 1.2 million tonnes of grain is wheat," said Zlochevsky.