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IKAR in Mass Media

Kazakhstan sees big jump in grain export to Russia in 2012/13

12 февраля 2013 года

ASTANA, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest grain producer, expects its grain export to Russia to rise substantially to between 900,000 and 1.1 million tonnes in the period from Sept. 1, 2012 to Aug. 31, 2013, the head of the Kazakh grain lobby said on Tuesday.

Russia, historically the world's third-largest wheat exporter, imported 440,000 tonnes of Kazakh grain in the previous marketing year, according to data from Kazakhstan's state-owned grain trader the Food Contract Corporation.

"We clearly understand that the entire region sprawling from the Urals to Siberia does not have enough (grain) reserves of its own to last until September this year," Nurlan Tleubayev, president of the Grain Union of Kazakhstan which groups together producers and traders, told Reuters in an interview.

Tleubayev was using a different timeframe for a marketing year, which typically lasts from July 1 to June 30.

Russia imported 650,000 tonnes of grain in the July-January period, including 350,000 tonnes of Kazakh grain, Russia's Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) said on Monday.

Taking into account flour, Kazakhstan's total grain export potential is 500,000 tonnes a month until Sept. 1, Tleubayev said.

He said that before January, Russian flour-milling companies were buying between 20,000 tonnes and 25,000 tonnes of Kazakh grain per month, and these volumes grew to 100,000 tonnes in the last 10 days of January.

"I believe this will rise further to 200,000 tonnes in February, and Russia will then continue buying 200,000 tonnes a month," he said.

Tleubayev said that logistically it was more advantageous for Kazakhstan, where major flour-milling companies are located in the north, to sell flour to northern neighbouring Russia than to markets in Central Asia which lie far away to the south.

"First-grade flour costs $500 (per tonne) and more in Russia, while our export price is $450," he said.

Hit by a severe drought, Kazakhstan's grain harvest more than halved to 12.9 million tonnes by clean weight last year from a post-Soviet record of 27.0 million tonnes in 2011.

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that the country of 17 million may export around 7.8 million tonnes in the current marketing year, way below last year's record 12.1 million tonnes but higher than the country shipped in 2010/11.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Muslim Umiryayev said on Jan. 22 that by that date Kazakhstan had already exported 3.8 million tonnes since the start of the marketing year on July 1.

Tleubayev said Russian grain traders preferred to work with Kazakh grain, because it was less advantageous to buy and transport grain from southern Russia, where the bulk of intervention grain stocks is held.

Moreover, apart from Russia's border regions in the Urals and Siberia, Kazakh grain exports have already started flowing to St Petersburg in Russia's northwest and to the central Russian cities of Moscow, Tver and Ryazan, Tleubayev said.

Source: Reuters  |  #grain   |  Comments: 0   Views: 49

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