Kazakhstan sees higher grain crop, exports

Kazakhstan's grain crop is set to rise this year from 12.4 million tonnes in 2004 as it enjoys favourable weather, and exports may surge nearly 80 percent to 5.0 million tonnes, the agriculture ministry said. The vast steppe nation of 15 million, Central Asia's largest grain producer, cut its output to 12.4 million tonnes by clean weight last year from 14.8 million tonnes in 2003.
"I believe the 2005 grain crop will be bigger than last year's," Arman Yevniyev, head of the agriculture ministry's plant growing department, told journalists on the sidelines of a grain experts' meeting in northern Kazakhstan.
He declined to give estimates for the 2005 crop.
Kazakhstan, which sowed millions of hectares of grain during the Soviet-era Virgin Lands campaign in the 1950-60s, is renowned for its hard wheat which is used in bread baking.
But harvests fluctuate from one year to the next, being highly susceptible to the country's fickle weather conditions.
Yevniyev said a snow blanket covering grain fields in Kazakhstan's main grainbelt in the north was two times thicker this year than in 2004, which meant there would be much more moisture in the soil during the sowing season this spring.
Last year, Kazakhstan's grain exports nose-dived to 2.8 million tonnes from a record 5.8 million tonnes in 2003. The plunge in exports was due to rich harvests in Russia and Ukraine, traditional buyers of Kazakh grain.
But Yevniyev said the two ex-Soviet cousins might boost grain imports this year.
"According to today's estimates of their winter crops, we know that the situation in Russia and Ukraine is a bit worse than last year. This means some good prospects for us," he said.
"I think, certainly, traditional buyers from the Commonwealth of Independent States - Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan - will account for 65 to 70 percent of our exports."
Yevniyev said Kazakhstan was also seeking to strengthen its position on Iran's market, which it had recently entered.
"We are also trying to approach China's market," he said. Last November, Kazakhstan launched a shorter railway route bound for its only Caspian Sea port of Aktau in the west to make cheaper exports of its oil, grain and metals.