September 1, 2005

USDA: Turkey soybean and products update 2005

Fuelled by the initiative to avoid higher import taxes and availability of GSM-102 program, MY 2004 become a record year for soybean and meal imports to Turkey.  Accordingly, soybean and meal imports for the marketing year now expected to reach 1 MMT and 600,000 MT respectively.

Last spring the GOT announced that import duties for variety of feed ingredients including soybean and meal would be increasing in the summer.

On July 1, 2005 the soybean meal import duty increased from zero to 4 percent for EU origin meal and from 2 to 6 percent for the rest of the world until the end of the year. On August 1, 2005 the soybean import duty went from zero to 4 percent for all origins until the end of the year 2005. This could hamper U.S. meal exports to Turkey in the future.

In addition, the drop in U.S. meal exports might result in an increase of soybean imports beans from South America rather than the States. 

The government is looking to improve local crushing while helping to reduce large sunflower seed stocks of Trakya Birlik, an agricultural sales cooperative.

The industry sources indicate that while GOT may lower the seed import taxes at the end of the year as announced earlier while keeping meal import taxes unchanged in order to utilize its large domestic crushing capacity, 4.5 million tons.  

For the full USDA report, click here.