February 7, 2012

Kazakhstan needs 10,000 wagons for grain transport

Kazakhstan needs 10,000 wagons for grain export, the Minister of Agriculture talked about grain storage and transportation problems at the ministry's board meeting on February 3.

"We currently need to export at least one million tonnes of grain every month. We are currently working on buying new wagons at Kazakhstan Temir Zholy. We have our own suggestion on activation of this work. We suggest to establish a joint company with ProdCorporation (Food Corporation) and increase the volume of planned wagons. We think that we need at least 5,000 additional wagons besides the existing 5,200. Ideally Kazakhstan needs around 15,000 wagons that would allow it to export around one million tonne of grain every month," Agriculture Minister Mamytbekov said.

"We need to construct additional elevators. There is deficiency of them in three main grain producing regions; around 1.5 million tonnes of grain  lack proper storage," he added.

According to the Ministry's information, Kazakhstan had a bumper grain harvest in 2011 - 1700 kilogrammes per one hectare. 27,000 tonnes of grain were harvested. This enable to country to potentially export twice as much grain as usual.