Ukraine's vegetable oil producers may face a serious shortage of raw seed for crushing due to the high pace of sunflower seed exports this season, analysts said on Wednesday.
UkrAgroConsult consultancy said Ukraine, which harvested about 4.5 million tonnes of sunseed in 2003, had exported 625,000 tonnes of seed in September-January 2003/04 and an additional 175,000 tonnes in February-March.
"The country's monthly sunseed exports should be between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes at a maximum if Ukraine hopes to avoid a deficit of raw seed for crushing," UkrAgroConsult said.
"If Ukrainian sunseed exports remain at the level of between 60,000 and 70,000 tonnes per month and domestic sunoil output is at about 120,000 tonnes per month, Ukraine will face a shortage of sunseed in June-July."
But analysts said foreign demand for Ukrainian sunseed and high world prices would support sunseed exports from Ukraine.
Earlier this season Ukraine's vegetable oil producers asked parliament to increase a sunseed export duty to 20 percent from 17 percent.
Some ministries have said they wanted to cut the duty to 15 percent. Ukraine is among the world's leading sunseed and sunoil producers, with its output accounting for around 10 percent of the world's sunseed production.
Analysts said Ukraine's sunflower oil output was likely to rise to about 1.5 million tonnes in 2003/04 (September-August) from 1.25 million last season.