Ukraine—The government abolished the quota for millet exports following a request by the Agrarian Council to the Prime Minister, Denis Shmygal and the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, Mykola Solsky, to increase the quota for millet exports.
According to the Cabinet of Ministers Resolution 49549 of May 7, millet is now included in the list of goods whose exports are subject to licensing.
According to its provisions, the quota for millet exports is completely abolished. Earlier, farmers faced a de facto ban on millet exports.
The Cabinet of Ministers Resolution of December 29, 2021 introduced a quota for the export of millet at level 0. This made it impossible to sell it abroad.
When the ban went into effect, Roman Leshchenko, Ukraine’s minister of agrarian and food policy, said the export ban is needed to prevent a “humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.”
He added that it would stabilize the market and “meet the needs of the population in critical food products.”
VAR, in its a statement to the government said, “Ukraine is fully supplied with millet and has a significant surplus. Therefore, we believe that the ban on millet exports is completely unjustified, and will only cause additional damage to farmers, who are already in difficult economic conditions.”
Following a request from the association to raise the quota to 80,000 tons, which is equal to export expectations for 2021-2022 MY, the Cabinet of Ministers abolished the quota for the export of millet, but maintained that the supplier must obtain a permit for its export.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, as of February 2022, the market supply of millet in Ukraine, according to the results of the 2021-2022 marketing year was 201 thousand tons.
Of which, 182 thousand tons were produced in the period and 18 thousand tons was the transitional balance from 2021.
At the same time, the average domestic consumption of millet in Ukraine is only 80 thousand tons, and export expectations for 2021-2022 MY were 80 thousand tons.
In addition, as of April 21, 2022, 4.8 thousand hectares of millet have already been sown in Ukraine, which is much more than as of the corresponding date in 2021 – 0.9 thousand hectares.
This acreage, coupled with the newly abolished quota bode well for Ukraine’s millet exports.
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