Russian ministry to send documents to lift wheat export duty to govt

MOSCOW, Aug 16 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Agriculture Ministry plans to submit documents to abolish the wheat export duty to the government later this week, after which Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich will schedule a meeting to discuss them, Russian Grain Union’s President Arkady Zlochevsky told reporters Tuesday.

Russia imposed a wheat export duty on July 1, 2015, which is measured as 50% of the price minus 6,500 rubles per tonne, but at least 10 rubles. On August 1, business daily Vedomosti reported citing a letter by the agriculture minister that the ministry has asked the government to be allowed to cancel the duty in the 2016–2017 agricultural year, which started on July 1.

“The Agriculture Ministry supports lifting of the export duty and has said so before. Dvorkovich has been on vacation, but he returned from vacation this week, so the ministry is submitting materials there, it is to file the materials this week. Then Dvorkovich will decide on the date of the meeting,” Zlochevsky said.

Russian farmers lost 50 billion rubles due to the duty in the 2015–2016 agricultural year. “We have calculated that for the previous season, and farmers lost about 1,000 rubles per tonne from the duty’s effect. Taking into account the volumes of our commercial grain – which amounted to 52–53 million tonnes in the previous season – farmers lost 50 billion rubles due to all these factors,” he said.

“This is why, without doubting the logic of the duty’s introduction, but the ircumstances are different now. We have a record harvest, and I can’t understand the reason behind limiting exports.”

He also said that Russia’s grain exports in the 2016–2017 agricultural year may stand at 38.5 million tonnes, including 28 million tonnes of wheat.

On July 4, a source in the Agriculture Ministry told PRIME that Russia exported a record high of 33.893 million tonnes of grain in the 2015–2016 agricultural year, which started on July 1, 2015 and ended on June 30, 2016.

(64.2076 rubles – U.S. $1)

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