April 7, 2015

The corn trade between Ukraine and China has demonstrated its rising importance as Ukrainian corn to the world's most populous nation reached 574,000 tonnes in February this year.

The figure is extracted from an overall 602,947 tonnes - a 26% increase last year - of international deliveries to the country.

The volume is also close to tripling the record in February 2014, based on official customs data. In addition, February's exports to China helped totaled Ukrainian corn deliveries at 1.04 million tonnes during the first two month of the year. This is a whopping record of more than five times the imports in the same period last year, data by the General Administration of Customs revealed.

China could expect more corn from Ukraine in the coming years. Under a 15-years agreement with China National Complete Engineering Corporation, the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine will deliver 80 million tonnes of grains over the period. The deal had already stimulated 1.5 million tonnes of grain imports into China in 2014 and paved the way for recent signings by local companies to purchase another 60,000 tonnes of Ukrainian grains.

Ukraine accounts for more than 90% of China's overall corn imports in March this year.