KYIV, Sept 20 – Ukraine will gather a record sunflower crop of three million tons this year and must accelerate lucrative exports from the harvest, Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Hlady said on Wednesday.
Hlady confirmed forecasts by analysts and traders who said sunseed was the only agricultural commodity unaffected by this year’s bad weather in Ukraine.
“We see this year’s crop at three million tons,” Hlady told journalists. “It is even better than last year’s very good crop of 2.7 million tons.”
Earlier this season the Agriculture Ministry forecast this season’s output at 2.8 million tons.
“We need to sell sunseed abroad, we have to accelerate sunseed export,” Hlady said. “We expect that sunseed export (in 2000/2001) may total some one million tons,” he said but added that this target could be achieved only if Ukraine’s parliament scrapped the current 23 percent export duty.
CONCERNS GROWS OVER DUTY
Analysts and officials say the duty, imposed by parliament last October to provide local vegetable oil firms with enough raw materials, undermined exports from the previous 1999/2000 crop and could hit sales this year, too.
The former Soviet state slashed its sunseed exports for the 1999/2000 season to 350,000 tons from the previous season’s 908,000 tons.
Analysts are sure exports will reach new highs if the legislature scraps the duty in the coming weeks.
Hlady said the government had asked parliament to cut the 23 percent duty to 10 percent from November to March.
“We asked the legislature to discuss this law as soon as possible and hope that the parliament cuts the duty,” Hlady said. “Ten percent is the compromise for all – for traders and vegetable oil producers.” Vegetable oil producers, however, appear to have benefited from the duty, boosting both output and payments to the budget.
Oil refineries produced some 440,000 tons of sunflower oil in January-July, sharply up from 190,000 in the same period last year.
Ukraine’s cash-short government wants to abolish the sunseed export duty also because that is one of the main terms set by the International Monetary Fund to resume lending, but the parliament is yet to give its final word.
