MOSCOW: Russia’s grain exports have stopped due to curbs brought in to protect domestic supply, putting big deals at risk, an influential farm lobby group said on Wednesday.
Russia’s main wheat buyers are Turkey, Iran and, very vulnerable to supply disruption, Egypt.
Moscow imposed informal grain export controls with tougher quality monitoring and limits on railroad loadings earlier this month, as it tackles a financial crisis linked to plunging oil and Western sanctions.
“Since last Thursday not a single vessel, which had been due to sail under contracts, has left,” Arkady Zlochevsky, the head of Russia’s Grain Union, the farmers lobby group, said.
Officials also plan to impose duty on grain exports. Zlochevsky said its exact level was an unimportant detail, as he was sure it would be prohibitive.
“All loadings are suspended, there is only a need to legally formalize it,” Zlochevsky said. Global wheat futures rose after his comments.
A spokeswoman for Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who had promised to prepare the proposal for an export duty, was not available for comment.