Ukraine Will Set Wheat, Barley Export Quotas to Bolster Domestic Supplies
Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Tim Morris, an analyst at Wise-Owl.com, talks about BHP Billiton Ltd.'s $39 billion unsolicited takeover offer for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. BHP may go directly to shareholders as early as this week with the bid, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Potash Corp., the world’s largest fertilizer producer, rejected BHP’s $130-a-share offer yesterday, calling it "grossly inadequate." Morris, who speaks from Sydney with Bloomberg's Rishaad Salamat, also discusses the outlook for agricultural commodities. (Source: Bloomberg)
Ukraine, the world’s biggest barley exporter, plans to limit overseas sales of the grain and wheat through the end of the year to shore up domestic food supply, Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said.
Export quotas will be probably 1 million metric tons for barley and 1.5 million tons for wheat from Sept. 1 through Dec. 31, the minister said today. Corn is likely to be exempt from the curbs, and 1 million tons of grain already at ports for export will be allowed to go before the quotas start, Prysyazhnyuk said. Ukraine shipped 5 million tons of wheat and 2.26 million tons of barley from September through December last year, according to researcher ProAgro.
“We need to secure food safety in the country,” the minister said at a meeting with exporters and producers in Kiev.
Russia, the world’s third-biggest wheat producer, banned grain exports as of Aug. 15 after the country’s worst drought in at least a half century ruined crops. Wheat traded in Chicago, a global benchmark, advanced as much as 90 percent since early June on concern that the drought in Russia, flooding in Canada and a lack of rain in Kazakhstan and the European Union would limit supply.
Ukraine’s government will announce details of the export quotas tomorrow, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Slauta told reporters today. National grain stockpiles were 16.9 million tons as of Aug. 1, down 21 percent from a year earlier, the state statistics committee said yesterday. The country expects to harvest 42 million tons of grain this year, compared with 46 million tons in 2009, according to government data.
‘Put Pressure On’
“Ukraine can export up to 15 million tons of grain this marketing year,” said Nikolay Vernitsky, director of Kiev-based ProAgro. “It is not an issue of shortage of grain. The issue is that the government wants to limit exports through quotas to put pressure on domestic grain prices and push them down.”
The country exported 1.1 million tons of wheat and 1.2 million tons of barley from July 1 through yesterday, Prysyazhnyuk said. The harvest will allow total exports of 2.42 million tons of barley in the marketing year that ends in June 2011, 6 million tons of wheat and 6 million tons of corn, the minister said.
National grain exports totaled 21.1 million tons in the marketing year that ended June 30, down from a record 24.7 million tons the previous year, according to Kiev-based researcher UkrAgroConsult.
Ukraine will sell 5.4 million tons of barley overseas in the 12 months ending in September, making it the world’s biggest exporter, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Wheat exports in the 12 months ending in June 2011 will be 6 million tons, the USDA says, 2 million tons less than it estimated a month earlier.
To contact the reporter on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page