December 23, 2010

Russian government's first grain sales to commence soon

In order to curb rising grain prices, the country will begin shortly to sell from its intervention stocks to drought-hit regions, said First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov.

The first stocks to be distributed among 15 regions and large cities like Moscow and St Petersburg are 211,000 tonnes of milling and feed wheat, barley and rye.

"The governors will have two weeks to prepare lists of hard-up agricultural producers," Zubkov said during a meeting with regional ministers and representatives of Russia's agribusiness.

He said that according to an order signed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the government is allowed to sell at low, fixed prices the first 1.3 million tonnes of grain out of the 9.64 million it has in its intervention stocks.

"In January, we will take a look how prices are behaving on the domestic market," Zubkov said. "If they don't go down we will channel more grain so that they finally decline."