China ready to subsidise corn exports

The government of China is ready to offer subsidies of 250 yuan (US$36.61) per tonne on up to 2 million tonnes of corn exports, but no deals have been done as prices remained too high, traders said on Thursday (September 17).

 

 

A senior trading manager said that based on Dalian corn prices, even with the government subsidies, the price is still at least US$10 per tonne higher than US corn to South Korea and Japan.

 

He said the drought impact was also likely to be mitigated because farmers had intensively farmed the crop and used good quality seed.

 

Another trader said 2 million tonnes was a very small percentage of the Chinese harvest, so it would not have a big impact on the domestic price.

 

US$1 = RMB6.82 (Sept 18)