KIEV: Ukraine is likely to maintain its grain crop and exports at a high level in the 2015/16 season thanks to favourable weather and a large sown area, which farmers planted despite a military conflict in the east, the agriculture minister said on Friday.
Oleksiy Pavlenko told Reuters that Ukraine could harvest around 60 million tonnes of grain this year and exports may stay at a near-record level of 34 million tonnes.
Ukraine, whose economy has been hit by the separatist conflict in the industrial east, harvested 63.8 million tonnes of grain in 2014 and exports could total 34 million tonnes in the 2014/15 season which runs from July to June.
“It is the largest export volume in Ukrainian history. Our target is to exceed 34 million tonnes,” Pavlenko said.
He said this season Ukraine was likely to export 10.9 million tonnes of wheat, 4.5 million tonnes of barley and 17.7 million tonnes of maiz.
In the next 2015/16 season, Ukraine, which will have record high ending stocks of 11 million tonnes, could export 12.7 million tonnes of wheat, 2.5 million tonnes of barley and 18.2 million tonnes of maize.
“Next season (2015/16) we see exports at this season’s level (2014/15 – 34 million tonnes) – we have every chance of keeping exports at this level”, he said.
Pavlenko said that a forecast decrease in the 2015 maize crop would be compensated for by high stocks left over from the previous season.
“We will have more wheat but less maize. The wheat harvest could be at the same level as last year as we have a larger sowing area,” he said.
Pavlenko said Ukraine would have enough grain for exports next year and planned no administrative measures to curb sales.
For the past few years, the ministry and traders have signed a memorandum in which they determine export rules for the forthcoming season as well as volumes of commodity exports.
“We have a good experience – we will work within the framework of the memorandum to have a clear understanding of how to work,” he said.
“We have a practice … without limiting exports through administrative methods”, he said, adding that as long as there was no emergency situation, there would be no curbs on exports.
Pavlenko said the ministry and traders’ unions would determine the volume available for export and this figure would be introduced in the memorandum with traders.
He said food grains were most likely to be included in the memorandum and that “predictability” was the key focus of the ministry’s export policy.
“Even when we had fighting in the country, we reached a record volume of exports – it is the strongest message for all our partners,” Pavlenko added.
He said Ukraine, which last year exported about 2 million tonnes of its maize to China under a $1.5 billion loan signed in 2012, planned to export at least the same volume in 2015 and had already supplied 600,000 tonnes.
All this grain were supplied by the state-run GPZKU grain firm but Pavlenko said that this year other companies could also start exporting to China.
