BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

15/12/2005

Belarus' ban on Ukrainian farm imports may hurt Ukraine's sunmeal market

According to market experts, Belarus' ban on agricultural products imports from 6 Ukrainian regions, triggered by bird flu infection outburst in Ukraine, may adversely affect Ukrainian sunflower meal market on the coming days.

On Monday Belarus' central veterinary body temporarily stopped issuing licenses on import from 6 southern and south-eastern regions of Ukraine. Experts say that companies, working in these Ukrainian regions, may redirect shipments of meal onto Poland, which will, however, boost the transportation costs and prompt the companies to raise the selling prices. On the other hand, the unexpected rise in supplies on that direction will bring the bidding prices down and might entail a price disparity.

A loss of so large market as that of Belarus will bring up an excessive supply of the on domestic Ukrainian market and will ultimately hurt the producers' prices, the market participants said.

According to APK-Inform market monitoring data, sunflower meal was last shipped Ukraine to Belarus at a price of $90-100 per tonne (DAF), depending on the contract timing. Polish companies are bidding for Ukrainian meal at $98 to 100 per tonne (DAF), while Ukrainian sellers are declaring the price of up to $105 per tonne.

According to official statistics, during two first months of this season (September-October) Ukraine exported near 138,790 tonnes of the meal. A bulk of the exports was made to Belarus - 45,090 tonnes, which was followed by Latvia (31,630 tonnes), Italy (19,930 tonnes) and Poland - (13,027 tonnes).

During 2004/05 MY Ukraine exported 860,860 tonnes of sunflower meal. Belarus purchased 200,350 tonnes of this product, Latvia - 132,190 tonnes and Poland - 107,050 tonnes of the meal.

Source:

http://www.agrimarket.info/showart.php?id=31830