Russia is expected to harvest 100 million tonnes of grains by clean weight this year, down 5 million from last year's near record level, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a government meeting on Thursday. Russia is one of the world's largest wheat exporters to customers in the Middle East and North Africa. Its exports have been constrained this year by a wheat export tax, which the government has agreed to reduce from October 1.
"In general, the harvest will be not bad, however it is unlikely to match the last year's level, and it is clear why - there have been problems with drought in 11 regions," Medvedev said. Last year Russia harvested the second-largest grain crop in its post-Soviet history of 105 million tonnes. Its farmers have already harvested 94.9 million tonnes of grains before drying and cleaning from 88 percent of the total area, according to Agriculture Ministry data. They have also sown winter grains for the 2016 crop on 69 percent of the planned area.
Russia has been trying to increase its state grain stocks, in which it currently has 2 million tonnes, by buying grain from the domestic market. However, its prices are currently too low to be competitive with market prices. The Agriculture Ministry has proposed raising prices for the state restocking programme by 1,000 roubles per tonne on average, the Minister Alexander Tkachev told the same meeting. He did not say when and if the government was going to approve this proposal. According to Tkachev, the country should have not less than 3.5 million tonnes of grain in these stocks. The government's current maximum prices for 2015/16 grain-purchasing interventions in roubles per tonne.