July 29, 2012

Kazakhstan requests China to up annual grain supply quota

Kazakhstan is calling on China to raise its annual grain quota to at least one million tonnes of supply to China.

In addition, Kazakhstan could supply the same volume by transit through China, commercial director of the JSC NC Food Corporation Marat Seysenov believes.

"At present, Kazakhstan exports only 166,000 tonnes of grain," Seysenov said addressing the 6th meeting of the subcommittee on trade and economic cooperation of Kazakhstan-China Cooperation Committee.

He said one of the problems of low supplies of Kazakh grain is on account of the interaction of the two countries' quarantine services.

In turn, deputy director of the Foreign Trade Department of the Commerce Ministry of China, Zhang Zeng Ming expressed his country's readiness to purchase more good quality Kazakh grain at a competitive price.

China agreed to transit three million tonnes of Kazakh grain through its territory to Southeast Asian countries in early December 2009. Kazakhstan began to export its wheat to China from March 2010. The first test batch was 7,000 tonnes. China consumes annually over 100 million tonnes of grain and produces about the same volume.

In accordance with the requirements of the Chinese side, transportation of grain, according to many documents, was only allowed in bags. However, the parties managed to agree that the Kazakh grain will be transported in containers.