The ban on wheat, corn, sunflower and rapeseed imports from Ukraine remains until September 15

2023-06-06 07:30:36

The National Grains Association is pushing to add oil, milk powder and honey to the list

The ban on imports from Ukraine to Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia of wheat, maize, sunflower and rape remains until September 15, 2023. The decision was published in the Official Journal of the European Union last night. This was reported this morning to BNT the chairman of the board of the National Association of Grain Producers (NAZ) Iliya Prodanov.

The association will insist that more be added to the list of prohibited agricultural imports from Ukraine the oil – refined and unrefined, dry milk and honey. This request will be presented to the new Minister of Agriculture Kiril Vatev during his first meeting with the NAZ.

The chairman pointed out that NAZ noticed a huge increase in the import of crude oil from Ukraine. This freezes the demand for Bulgarian sunflower, which is mainly bought on the domestic market by processing enterprises.

Ilia Prodanov believes that our country, and mainly the European Union, put geopolitical goals first, and the interests of European farmers are further behind, which is why farmers remain unprotected. “We are concerned that not market logic is at play here, but politics. Our appeals to the European Commission are to protect an ecological production that protects European requirements and has survived the past years. The actions that Europe is taking are not entirely in this direction,” said Iliya Prodanov, giving the example of oil. If the EC wanted to protect farmers, along with the sunflower import restriction, it should have introduced the same for oil. And this is elementary logic.

The chairman announced that according to NAZ data, about 1 million tons of sunflower and another 1.5 to 2 million tons of wheat are stored in the grain producers’ warehouses.

Last year’s sunflower harvest was sold at extremely low prices – 630-650 BGN per ton. In the case of wheat, the international prices we see at the moment are around BGN 350-360 per ton for the new crop, Prodanov pointed out. “It’s the perfect storm for Bulgarian manufacturing right now,” he said, warning that mass bankruptcies could already be expected as the new crop was produced at higher cost due to higher input prices.

Bulgaria has lost traditional markets where wheat was traded. They are in Europe and in Africa. These markets are already occupied by production from Ukraine. This also applies to Romania and Poland, added the chairman of the NAZ.