In the current season, Ukraine demonstrated rather record rates of wheat supplying to foreign markets.
During the period of July-January of 2016/2017 MY, the exports of Ukrainian wheat reached 12.7 million tons, up by 16% YoY (11 million tons). At the same time, Ukraine showed a significant increase of grain exports in the Asian direction. In the reporting period, Ukraine supplied nearly 66% of all export consignments of wheat to Asia, as opposed to 47% in the same period of last season. In particular, the share of South Asia covered 30% of the Ukrainian wheat exports, South-East Asia – 28% of the consignments, and East Asian countries – 9% of the consignments.
In the current season, India became the main sales market for Ukrainian wheat in the Asian region. In July-January, the country received 20% of all supplied volumes of the grain, or 2.6 million tons. In terms of the forecast import volumes of wheat to India at the level of 3.7 million tons in 2016/2017 MY, Ukrainian wheat has already covered more than 70% of the reporting volumes. At the same time, the market is quite tough, as the local government has a rather hard-line policy for supporting the domestic production. Therefore, zeroing of the import duties became a transitional measure in terms of a difficult situation with the harvest volumes and domestic prices in India, and in the future the market may even lose its attractiveness for supplies from Ukraine.
As for the other key importers, it is worth noting that in the current season the exports to Thailand reduced by 16% (or by 280 thousand tons), and to Egypt – by 17% (or by 236 thousand tons). At the same time, the exports to Indonesia increased by 33% (331 thousand tons), and to Bangladesh – by 63% (463 thousand tons). (APK-Inform/Business World Magazine)