2023-04-22 12:38:00
The activity of the commercial ports managed by the National Ports Agency (ANP) was marked by a sharp increase in cereal imports for the year 2022.
According to data published by the ANP, cereal imports amounted to 8.8 million tonnes (MT) over the past year, marking an increase of 23.2% year on year.
“This development is due in particular to the unfavorable climatic conditions which led to a 67% drop in the national production of the main cereals (soft wheat, durum wheat and barley) for the 2021/2022 campaign, the volume of which did not exceed the 34 million quintals”, explains a report on the activity of the commercial ports managed by the ANP.
According to this document made public recently, a high concentration of this activity was observed at the port of Casablanca with a volume of 4.7 million tonnes, representing approximately 53.6% of the overall grain traffic (i.e. an increase of 10 .3%).
The same source specifies that “imports of this commodity in other ports also recorded more or less significant variations, namely: Jorf lasfar (+48.2%), Agadir (+32.9%), Nador ( +32.9%) and Safi (+44.3%)”.
Overall, at the end of 2022, the activity of the commercial ports managed by the Agency showed a drop of 4.2%, compared to the previous year, reaching an overall volume of 87.2 million tonnes. .
As a reminder, the final production of the main cereals for the 2021/2022 agricultural campaign was 34 million quintals. This reflects “a 67% drop compared to the previous campaign which recorded an exceptional performance of 103.2 MQX”, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests.
As indicated by the Department of Agriculture, the cereal area sown for the campaign was only 3.6 million hectares against 4.35 million hectares during the previous campaign. In question, the unfavorable climatic conditions observed during the past agricultural campaign (very low rainfall and poor temporal distribution of it)
In the end, according to this department, cereal production was as follows: 18.9 million Qx of common wheat; 8.1 million Qx of durum wheat and 7.0 million Qx of barley.
As the quantities harvested could not satisfy national demand, imports naturally increased during this period.
It should be noted that at the global level, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has slightly raised its forecast for world cereal production for 2022 to 2,777 million tonnes, reflecting a decline of 1.2% year-on-year.
“As almost all of the 2022 production has been harvested, this latest forecast reflects minor upward revisions to estimated coarse grain production in Australia and Ukraine,” the agency said.
According to FAO’s Cereal Supply and Demand Bulletin, forecasts for world rice production have been revised down slightly (0.6 million tonnes) since March, mainly because estimates of the Indonesian harvest completed last December are lower than expected.
As the FAO points out, from the same source, “this decline offsets the improvement in production prospects in Cambodia, linked to the sustained rate of sowing during the current dry season cycle”.
Thus, the world rice production of 2022-2023 is anticipated at 516.0 million tons (for milled rice), which represents a decrease of 1.6% compared to the record level of 2021-2022, but remains a above-average harvest, she says.
It should be noted that ANP statistics suggest that overall activity was marked by a 2.4% increase in imports, with a volume of 56.2 MT. This development is attributed on the one hand to the increase in cereal (+23.2%) and hydrocarbons (+10%) traffic and on the other hand to the drop in sulfur imports (-8.4%) , sulfuric acid (-39.8%) and steel products (-18.1%).
Still according to the same source, the year 2022 was also marked by a sharp decline of 18.5% in exports, with a volume of around 27 MT.
This increase is explained in particular by the fall in foreign sales of phosphates (-42.7%), fertilizers (-16.6%) and phosphoric acid (-29.3%).
The ANP also indicates that “exports, excluding phosphate products, increased by 10.1%, with an additional volume of 885,902 tonnes”, following the increase in salt traffic (+418, 3%), clinker (+30.2%) and feldspar (+144.3%).
Alain Bouithy
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