PARIS: Soft wheat exports from the European Union so far in the 2022/23 season that began on July 1 had reached 3.75 million tonnes by Aug. 21, according to data published on Monday by the European Commission which warned that the data may still be incomplete.

That compared with 4.01 million tonnes by the same week in 2021/22, the data showed.

The EU’s executive has reported in recent weeks that data it compiles on exports and imports of cereal and oilseed products could be incomplete, and traders have said its soft wheat export tally has lagged a fast pace of shipments from France.

Soft wheat exports from France, the bloc’s top wheat supplier, so far this season were put at 1.61 million tonnes, compared with around 2 million tonnes suggested by port loading data compiled by Refinitiv.

EU maize imports were put at 3.24 million tonnes, against 2.05 million tonnes a year ago. The figure suggests there was a data error in the EU’s estimate for imports up to the previous week, published last week, as they were higher, showing maize imports totalled 3.59 million tonnes between July 1 and Aug. 14.

A country breakdown showed imports by Ireland totalled 126,427 tonnes between July 1 and Aug. 21. However, that was down from last week’s data which showed Ireland’s imports at 1.13 million tonnes for July 1 to Aug. 14, an unusually large amount that surpassed Ireland’s maize imports last season, suggesting a data error or incomplete data.

Similarly, EU maize imports from Ukraine totalled 1.24 million tonnes up to Aug. 21, according to Monday’s data, but that was also down, by 1 million tonnes, from the figure up to Aug. 14.

Between the July 1 and Aug. 21 period last year imports from Ukraine totalled 615,865 tonnes.

Brazil overtook Ukraine in the data as the leading supplier of maize to the EU so far in 2022/23 with 1.73 million tonnes.

EU barley exports so far in 2022/23 totalled 1.39 million tonnes against 2.45 million a year ago, the data also showed.