Ukraine Has No Plans to Limit Grain Exports, Minister Says

Ukraine will continue to export
grains and has no plans to limit shipments, Agriculture Minister
Mykola Prysyazhnyuk told reporters in Kyiv.

Grain exports stalled in February, the minister said today.
“We do not plan any limits so far.” Prysyazhnyuk declined to
give a wheat export forecast.

Ukraine’s grain exports declined by 5.5 percent in the
first 13 days of February to 469,000 metric tons, agricultural
researcher UkrAgroConsult said in an e-mailed statement today.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s government asked grain
traders last week to limit wheat exports after winter plantings
damaged by drought in the autumn were aggravated by several
weeks of freezing temperatures.

February exports included 86,500 tons of wheat which went
to Italy, Jordan and Israel. Ukraine also shipped 374,000 tons
of corn to Egypt, Morocco and Israel, the Kyiv-based researcher
said.

Ukraine will have to replant half of its winter grain
areas, or 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) in the
spring, Azarov said on Feb. 10.

The Agriculture Ministry reduced its grain export forecast
for the marketing year, which started on July 1, to 23 million
to 24 million tons from 26 million to 27 million tons, Serhiy
Kvasha, head of the agriculture markets department, said on Dec.
5.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at
dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net;
Kateryna Choursina in Moscow at
kchoursina@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Claudia Carpenter at
ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net