December 3, 2010

Ukraine's grain exports remain blocked

Grain exports from the Ukraine are still blocked because the Ministry of Economy is not providing the corresponding licenses to grain trading companies, declared Leonid Kozachenko, the President of Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation.

Kozachenko reminded that the committee distributed 2.182 million tonnes of quotas for grain exports from Ukraine and trading companies on November 12. At the same time, the planned meeting of the special committee on distribution of quotas for agricultural commodities exports took place on December 2 where the committee planned to continue allocating the quotas. However, it was postponed to December 8 for unknown reasons.

According to Kozachenko's data, such a situation led to the fact that nearly 183,000 tonnes of grains for the further export trading are blocked in the ports of Ukraine currently.

The president of the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation said that Ukraine exported nearly five million tonnes of grains from the beginning of the current marketing year as opposed to 11.5 million tonnes at the same period during the previous marketing year. At the same time, the expert believes that Ukraine is able to supply 13-14 million tonnes of grains on the world market without suffering from any serious consequences in the current marketing year.

Kozachenko has doubts that Ukraine will be able to export the remaining eight million tonnes of grains till the end of the current marketing year if the government releases export trading with grains.

According to him, the issue with corn exports is important nowadays. Kozachenko said that Ukraine produced nearly 12 million tonnes of corn in the current year as opposed to 10 million tonnes in the previous year, and exported 640,000 tonnes of grains only from the beginning of the current market year, as opposed to two million tonnes in the same period of 2009-10.

Kozachenko also said that the prices fell due to the absence of corn export trading, and in March 2011, the prices will continue to decrease because of the influence of the world tendencies. As a result, the president of the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation offered to cancel corn export quotas immediately. According to him, Nikholay Prysiazhnyuk, the Minister of Agrarian Policy, also supports the initiative.
 

As a reminder, agrarian nongovernmental organisations applied to Viktor Yanukovych, the President of Ukraine, had ordered the government to cancel corn export quotas immediately on December 1.

From October 19 to December 31, 2010, Ukraine imposed quotas for exports of 2.7 million tonnes of grains, including 0.5 million tonnes of wheat and two million tonnes of corn.