August 23, 2011

China's new wheat sales not up to pace

China's grain enterprises had bought 42.04 million tonnes of new wheat by August 10, down more than four million tonnes from last year's levels.

The state-owned firms' purchases stood at 27.72 million tonnes, accounting for 66% of the total.

Currently, farmers are reluctant to sell on expectation for higher prices while many grain firms are not active in purchases for lack of bank loans.

As market prices of wheat are higher than the minimum purchase prices this year, the government fails to start the wheat stockpiling programme and this has caused some grain producing and distributing firms unable to get financial support from banks for wheat purchases.

The China National Grain and Oils Information Centre earlier predicted that the country's wheat output this year would reach 116.79 million tonnes, up 1.4% over last year.