Russia may relinquish in 2008 its position as the world's top raw sugar importer due to current oversupply, more domestic beet refining and white sugar imports from neighbouring countries, a leading analyst said on Tuesday.
"The world should start preparations for changes on the sugar market," Yevgeny Ivanov of the independent Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) told Reuters.
Russia consumes over 5.5 million tonnes of white sugar a year and last year refined a record 3.27 million tonnes from domestic beet. Customs data show Russia imported 2.63 million tonnes of raws and 111,200 tonnes of white sugar in 2006. Ivanov added Russia imported at least 215,000 tonnes of white sugar from Belarus, not accounted for in the official statistics.
The possibility of setting a seasonal import tariff of $250 per tonne on raw sugar next year, instead of the current $140, could cause imports to rise in the interim period, which would raise domestic stocks that are already larger than last year's.
On Wednesday, the body responsible for drafting government orders, the Commission for Protective Measures in Foreign Trade, is scheduled to examine whether to set this tariff from January to May and in December 2008. "If the tariff is adopted, imports will rise. Not now, but in November and December, as nobody is going to store raws for half a year, waiting for the refineries to finish processing the beet crop," Ivanov said.
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