There may be a new wave of grain intervention offers in Hungary as the forint's recent weakness has made intervention prices more attractive, the Grain Association said on Monday.
Hungary already accounts for over half of the offers in the European Union's surplus mechanism, with 4.33 million tonnes offered by March 19, after two successive bumper crops filled silos to bursting point.
The EU fixes intervention prices in euros, against which the forint reached 25-month lows last week around 268. At 1330 GMT it was trading at 264.28/68, but it is seen vulnerable to emerging market trends and as April general elections approach.
"There may well be another wave of intervention offers as farmers are getting 1,000 forints more for each tonne (of grain offered)," Grain Association General Secretary Zsofia Potsa told Reuters.
Most of the new offers would be maize, as free-market wheat stocks have been depleted by intervention, exports and the purchases of local mills and feed makers, she said.
"There is no supply market in maize, either, it is not as though there is too much maize out in the market," she added.
Farmers have offered 3.22 million tonnes of maize for intervention after a record crop of over 9 million tonnes last year in the landlocked Eastern European country.
Hungary's traders have sold intervention grain to drought-hit Iberian countries in EU tenders, but the tenders to sell Hungarian maize to other EU destinations have been mostly unsuccessful.
"The maize must find its market within the 25 EU states, but it matters when," Potsa said. "There are a lot of stocks which are over 1 year old, and maize does not like being stored for a long time."
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