December 3, 2008

Ukraine's grain exports fell by 10 percent from 2.28 million tonnes to 2.05 million tonnes in November, a leading agriculture consultancy said on Tuesday (December 2, 2008).

UkrAgroConsult said in a report that wheat exports had fallen to 1.24 million tonnes from 1.33 million a month earlier, while barley shipments shrank to 580,000 tonnes from 891,000.

Ukraine, which estimates its 2008 harvest at about 50 million tonnes of grain, hopes to boost exports to 22.6 million tonnes in the 2008/09 season, according to farm ministry estimates.

It said 54.2 million tonnes of grain bunker weight had been harvested as of November 25.

Analysts, however, say this year's crop will not exceed 48 million tonnes, with exports likely to reach 17.5 million.

UkrAgroConsult said grain exports totalled 10.9 million tonnes in July to November 2008 compared with 395,610 in the same period in 2007/08.

It said wheat shipments had risen to 5.589 million tonnes so far this season from 110,698 in July-November 2007, while export of barley jumped to 4.215 million tonnes from 11,949 tonnes.

Ukraine exported about 4 million tonnes of grain in 2007/08 season after the government introduced prohibitive export restrictions due to a decrease in 2007 harvest to 29.3 million tonnes.

Ukraine consumes up to 26 million tonnes of grain per season.