May 7, 2009

Kazakhstan plans to build a new grain terminal in 2009 that would help boost grain exports by 1.5 million tonnes a year, a senior agriculture official said on Wednesday (May 6).

Central Asia's largest grain exporter expects this year's harvest to be 10 percent higher than last year's crop of 15.6 million tonnes, according to a March forecast. It plans to export 6.0 million tonnes of grain out of last year's crop.

Askarbek Karazhigitov, head of the state's farming credit company, said the new terminal in western Kazakhstan would also increase exports to the South such as such as Iran and Afghanistan.

Karazhigitov said the facility is due to be built by March 2010 but Kazakhstan wants to export as much as 9 million tonnes a year as part of the country's goal to grab a bigger share of the global grain market. Its distant location and lack of export infrastructure has far hampered these plans.

The new US$46 million terminal will be connected with the Kazakh Caspian port of Aktau and will help Kazakhstan boost its export potential, he said.

Kazakhstan also aims to build a new terminal in Iran by the end of the year that will add 700,000 tonnes of export capacity, officials have said.