Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest grain producer, has further cut its forecast for grain exports in the current marketing year due to bad weather that severely damaged the quality of the harvest. Kazakhstan, a vast steppe nation that is part of the Black Sea grain exporting region along with Russia and Ukraine, was hit by heavy rains and early snow in its three main grain-growing regions in the north last autumn.
It is now likely to export 6.5-6.6 million tonnes in this marketing year, which ends on June 30, down from an earlier forecast of 7 million tonnes, Kazakh Agriculture Minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov said on Tuesday. "We are currently loading (for exports) around 500,000 tonnes of grain monthly, including flour," he told reporters.
"We have now May and June left, one more million (tonnes) will be loaded, so it's likely to be 6.5-6.6 million tonnes, roughly the annual average level." The landlocked country exported 5.367 million tonnes between July 1 and April 30, down from 7.54 million tonnes in the same period a year ago, official data showed. Kazakhstan's grain exports totalled 8.709 million tonnes in the 2013/14 marketing year, up from 7.023 million in the previous season.
Kazakh officials had originally expected grain exports to reach 8 million tonnes this marketing year, but low grain quality forced them to revise their estimates. "Last year's adverse weather affected our export potential, but I believe we will fully provide necessary volumes of grain to the markets that traditionally buy it from us," Dauren Makhazhanov, acting board chairman of Kazakhstan's state-run farming holding KazAgro, told journalists earlier on Tuesday. Kazakhstan traditionally exports grain, mainly wheat, to its Central Asian neighbours, as well as to China, Iran and Azerbaijan.