KYIV, Sept 21 – Ukraine grain prices showed little change over the past week, but key players are continuing to hold onto stocks as they await a rise in the market, traders said on Thursday.
Traders said Ukraine, hit by a poor wheat crop this year, might face a shortage of milling wheat in two or three months and they planned to sell their grain only then.
“The market is quiet, but we forecast good deals in the near future, when grain prices leap,” one trader said.
“Farms are waiting for grain prices to increase to sell grain to us, we are waiting for a price increase to sell expensive grain to millers, while consumers are waiting for traders to start imports,” another trader said.
“The whole market is waiting and trade is quiet. It is a game between farmers, consumers and traders.”
Ukraine harvested a meager 10.8 million tons of wheat, by bunker weight, in the 1999/2000 season, even less than the previous season’s paltry 13.5 million tons.
Analysts say the wheat crop this year is unlikely to exceed 10 million tons clean weight.
Market operators said milling wheat minimum/maximum prices were practically unchanged at Hr 740/860 per ton (EXW) and only small parcels traded.
Traders said the market was also wary over future currency moves and was awaiting new sunseed market regulations after the government said it had asked the legislature to cut the heavy 23 percent sunseed export duty to 10 percent.
Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Hlady said on Wednesday the government planned to set the new duty of 10 percent from November to March.
“This season’s sunseed crop is likely to be higher than in 1999 but export barriers may cause a serious fall in sunseed prices,” said Mykola Vernytsky at Olimpex trading house. Now sunseed trades at $145/162 per ton (FOB Black Sea).
The government sees the sunseed crop at three million ton in 2000, compared with 2.75 million in 1999, and says Ukraine may accelerate sunseed exports to one million tons in 2000/2001.
