The FINANCIAL — Ukraine may lose its second largest export market of wheat – Egypt, which in the spring 2017 established new rules for the imports, and increased the required protein content to 12.5% as opposed to 11.5% for the grain imported from Ukraine and Russia, declared the First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, Maksym Martynyuk on September 8.
According to him, in the current year there will be some problems with the exports of wheat to Egypt – the country will purchase somewhat lower volumes of wheat. Also, Ukraine can completely get out of the Egyptian market, because there are no such large-scale batches of wheat with such specifications.
M.Martynyuk noted that the reporting decision would work in favour of Russian suppliers. There is an opinion that Egypt changed the requirements for imported wheat to increase the supplies of Russian wheat. And if the buyer set a goal to buy the Russian grain, Ukrainian traders are unlikely to change it, the Deputy Minister explained, and added that Ukraine would increase the exports to Asian countries to compensate the possible decline of supplies to Egypt.
M.Martynyuk reported that in the season-2016/17 Ukraine exported nearly 6.6 mln tonnes of wheat to Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Korea and the Philippines, which markets covered nearly 38% of the general exports, according to APK-Inform.
