Russia May Not Need to Limit Grain Exports, Producers Union Says

Russia May Not Need to Limit Grain Exports, Producers Union Says

Russia may not need to limit grain
exports at all this season because stockpiles are enough to meet
domestic demand, the Grain Producers’ Union said.
Russia last week shelved plans to tax grain exports from
April after cereal output exceeded forecasts, easing concerns of
supply curbs that helped lift wheat prices. Grain stockpiles at
large farms and silos were 36 million metric tons as of Jan. 1,
according to data from the grain union.
“There are no grounds for administrative restriction of
exports,” Pavel Skurikhin, president of the grain union, said
in the statement.
Wheat for March delivery fell 0.7 percent to $6.6375 a
bushel at 11:12 a.m. London time on the Chicago Board of Trade.
Prices have dropped 23 percent in the past year as Russia
boosted export supplies after lifting an export ban in place
since a crop-wasting drought in 2010. The ban ended July 1.
“If we faced the same drought without today’s
capabilities, we would have experienced something similar to the
hunger of the 1930s,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in
Moscow today.
Russia’s grain crop is estimated at 93.9 million tons,
First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said on Feb. 3,
compared with his October forecast for output of between 90
million to 92 million tons. Russia will be the world’s third-
largest wheat shipper behind the U.S. and Australia in 2011-12,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.