China: Corn imports increase 56 times in quantity in first seven months

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

2 Sep 2010

During the first seven months this year, China's trade deficits of agricultural products grew 61.9 percent to reach $13.05 billion, and corn imports grew 56 times, according to figures released by the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) Of the agricultural products, grains and cotton saw the largest growth in imports. The imports of the former grew 66 percent year-on-year and of the latter 97.6 percent compared with the same period last year.
Of the grains, the quantity of corn imported grew 56 times compared with last year; wheat imports doubled; rice imports were up 42.6 percent, and barley imports up 26.7 percent.
Zhou Siran, food analyst from consultant company ocn.com, said that the large hikes in grain imports are mainly attributed to recent natural disasters, which caused output to decrease and demand to rise.
The amount of imported corn in July doubled that of the total amount for the first six months; and the domestic price of the grain has increased 20 percent.
Experts believe that deep processing of the grain to some extent, drives the demand. Li Ninghui, director of the Center for ChineseAgricultural Policy (CCAP) said that besides being used domestically, the grain is also used to produce corn-based ethanol fuel.
According to industry analysts, as international grain prices stabilize, the price-soaring trend may slow. But Guo Chunai, analyst from cngrain.com, warned that the country should limit the amount of corn used in deep-processing.

Source: Global Times