The grain harvest in Ukraine this year could fall to about 44 million tons due to the poor state of winter crops from last year's record 56.7 million tons, senior analyst at Dragon Capital Tamara Levchenko has predicted.

"We expect the 2012 harvest at the level of about 44 million tons, which is 22% less than last year," she said, adding that the crop will depend largely on what the weather will be like in future.

According to Dragon Capital, more than 25% of winter crops are in poor condition due to adverse weather conditions for them in the fall and early winter.

Levchenko said that analysts had also predicted that Ukraine would export 23-24 million tons of grain in the 2011/2012 marketing year, noting that within six months, by the end of December 2011, Ukrainian exporters sold about 9.2 million tons of grain abroad.

She said that now the prices for Ukrainian grain, after the cancellation of last year's restrictions on grain exports, were 100% correlated with prices on world markets.

"The difference is only in the price of logistics and a small profit of exporters, which is 5-10 dollars per ton," the expert said.

According to Dragon Capital estimates, the average price for Ukrainian grain crops this year will be 15% lower than last year.

The analyst said that the factors that will keep prices from falling included the projected restriction of grain exports by the Russian authorities, which announced such a measure when exports will reach 23-25 million tons. She said that in the first six months of the 2011/2012 marketing year, Russian suppliers sold abroad over 20 million tons of grain.
 

Ukrinform