Ukraine, which has urged traders to halt wheat exports, will allow them to ship abroad an additional 300,000 tonnes of wheat which they can buy from the state-run intervention fund, Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said on Thursday. "We will allow these additional exports. The terms of shipments are unrestricted," Prysyazhnyuk told reporters.
He said the state fund needed money to close a forward contract and gave no further details of the deal. Traders and the ministry agreed earlier this year that the 2012/13 season's wheat exports would not exceed 6 million tonnes. The ministry has also said it would allow traders to implement all already concluded deals.
According to official data, the former Soviet republic had exported 5.7 million tonnes of wheat as of December 18. An additional 106,000 tonnes are already loaded on ships and 119,000 tonnes of the commodity are awaiting shipment in port silos. The State Statistics Service this week said Ukraine's wheat stocks fell to 6.5 million tonnes as of December 1 from 8.2 million a month earlier, just enough to safeguard domestic needs for the rest of the season.