DUSHANBE, August 24, 2010, Asia-Plus — Another spike in grain prices will affect the world market by the end of 2010 and Tajikistan will not be the exception, Taghoymurod Sharipov, the director of the state unitary enterprise, Ghalla (grain products), said in an interview with Asia-Plus Tuesday afternoon.
According to him, monitoring of Tajikistan’s grain imports shows that the grain prices are rising. “Tajikistan now imports grains and wheat flour at the rate of US$345.00 per one ton of wheat flour and US$243.00 per one ton of grains,” said Sharipov, “Compared to July the grain and flour prices have risen on average by US$5.00-US$10.00.”
As far as the grain and flour prices at the domestic market are concerned, Tajik authorities have curbed the price for a 50-kilogram of wheat flour at 90.00 somoni, he added.
The Ghalla top manager noted that the grain and flour prices would probably show downward tendency with the beginning of the grain-harvesting campaign.
Tajikistan’s annual requirements in cereals are 1.425 million tons, while specialists from the Ministry of Agriculture expect local farmers to produce 917,000 tons of grains this year.
Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus provide the bulk of Tajikistan’s grain and flour imports. Kazakhstan now accounts for 96 percent of the overall volume of Tajikistan’s grain imports and the remaining 4 percent are delivered from Russia and Belarus.
We will recall that FAO reported on August 4 that the impact of unfavorable weather events on crops in recent weeks has led FAO to cut its global wheat production forecast for 2010 to 651 million tons, from 676 million tons reported in June. Devastating drought afflicting crops in the Russian Federation, coupled with anticipated lower outputs in Kazakhstan and Ukraine have raised strong fears about the availability of world wheat supply in the 2010/11 marketing season, the FAO report said, noting that international wheat prices have jumped by over 50 percent since June. This rapid increase in prices is prompting concerns about a repeat of the crisis of 2007/08.
