Russia announced a decrease in grain exports due to a “difficult week in terms of geopolitics”

Russia has announced that for the first time in six months, grain exports have decreased. From August 1 to August 7, 871 thousand tons of Russian grain were shipped for export, down 43% from a year earlier. The reason for this decline is the “geopolitically difficult” week when the Black Sea ports were closed, as well as the exhaustion of the previous season’s export potential.

This was reported by Interfax, citing monitoring data from the Russian Grain Union.

The director of the Union’s analytical department, Elena Tyurina, noted that the weekly drop in exports was the first in six months. Exports of wheat fell by 42% to 735 thsd tonnes, barley – by 63% to 88.5 thsd tonnes, corn – by 29% to 16.5 thsd tonnes.

“Now we are waiting for the new harvest grain to arrive. It is a kind of off-season, but it is quite possible that shipments will increase in the second half of August,” said Ms. Tyurina.

According to her, major importers have reduced purchases of Russian wheat. Shipments to Turkey decreased by 38%, to 125 thsd tonnes, and to Saudi Arabia by 31%, to 66 thsd tonnes. Egypt, a traditional buyer of Russian wheat, reduced its purchases by 13 times over the year: from 422 thsd tonnes a year earlier to 32.4 thsd tonnes.

Ms. Tyurina added that since August, Algeria has increased its purchases of Russian wheat by 85%. Also, in 2023, “quite serious volumes” of wheat were shipped to Bangladesh, Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil, although in August 2022 there were no shipments there, the representative of the Russian Grain Union said.

As a reminder, grain exports from Russia doubled in 2023, despite Russia’s claims that the grain deal was ineffective.

Tags: wheat, Russia, export, grain