Russia's SovEcon agriculture consultancy said on Thursday it had upgraded its forecast for Russia's 2017/18 grain exports by 500,000 tonnes, to 44.5 million tonnes, due to a fast pace for supplies earlier in the season, which started on July 1. Its estimate for Russia's 2017/18 wheat exports was raised to 33.9 million tonnes from 32.4 million tonnes, for barley exports by 200,000 tonnes to 4.5 million tonnes;
SovEcon's estimate for Russia's 2017/18 maize (corn) exports was downgraded to 4.5 million tonnes from 5.7 million tonnes; SovEcon also said it expected the competition to intensify between the three types of grain for port space and that maize could be the worst prepared for this competition;
SovEcon also said that it reduced its estimate for state grain purchases for the government inventories this marketing year to zero. It expects the government to refrain from purchases into the grain inventories and believes that it may sell some grain from the stockpile.
Russia's Agriculture Ministry plans to sell 1.5 million tonnes of grain from the state reserves during the 2017/18 marketing year, Interfax news agency reported earlier in October, citing a deputy minister. That includes 500,000 tonnes the government has already been considering releasing from its 4 million-tonne grain stockpile.