EU accounts for half of all Ukrainian wheat exports since July 2015

Monday, June 6, 2016 - 19:29 (EEST) Section: Latest news

The European Union accounted for half of all Ukrainian wheat exports in the current marketing year, which started on July 1, 2015, and will end on June 30, 2016, according to Ukraine`s trade representative Nataliya Mykolska.
”Actual data of our partners in the European Commission`s Directorate-General for Agriculture [and Rural Development] shows that in the current marketing year, which started on July 1, 2015 and will last until June 30, 2016, Ukraine is the largest importer of wheat to the EU. It has already shipped 1.637 million tonnes, or 49% of total imports to the EU. We`re ahead of the United States, Canada and Russia taken all together in terms of [wheat exports],” she wrote on Facebook on June 3.
Mykolska says that the used quota doesn`t mean a halt to wheat shipments to the EU.
”The annual quota within the DCFTA [EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area] set at 950,000 tonnes is over. At the same time, and this is important (!!) – it doesn`t mean that our wheat exports to the EU will be suspended. Shipments will continue both as part of the EU`s global grain quota and beyond the quotas,” she said.
As UNIAN reported earlier, since the beginning of the marketing year, Ukrainian famers exported 36.5 million tonnes of grain.
In 2015, Ukraine harvested 60.1 million tonnes of grain and leguminous crops, which was 5.8% down on 2014, according to the State Statistics Service, which does not include data from temporarily occupied territory of Crimea and Donbas.
Ukraine`s Agriculture Ministry forecasts that grain exports from Ukraine in the current marketing year will exceed 36 million tonnes. Experts forecast that exports may even hit 39.8 million tonnes.
In the 2014-2015 marketing year, this indicator was 34.8 million tonnes.