Although the grain corridor task has been in existence for 8 years, and in 2023 the largest contract was allegedly announced for it amounting to $25 billion (about PLN 101 billion), The Chinese marketplace is inactive de facto closed for Russian wheat. This information was provided by Arkady Złoczewski, president of the Russian Grain Union, at a press conference.
“Russian wheat is not received by China. This decision at the highest political level," said Złoczewski. He added that presently cross-border deliveries from Russia to China go only to any provinces, despite Beijing inactive reasonably actively buying wheat from Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
— No substance how much they tell us about phytosanitary conditions, any border procedures and so on, until there is simply a top-down decision at organization and government level, nothing will happen. These will only be method obstacles that cannot be overcome by negotiation between Rosselkhozoverz (Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision Service) and Chinese phytosanitary service," said Złoczewski quoted by Business Online.
According to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture last year Moscow exported 71.3 million tonnes of grain, of which 57.2 million tonnes of wheat. Its largest buyers were Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Bangladesh.
Failure
Złoczewski estimated that in 2025 Russian grain exports could fall by a 3rd — to 47-48 million tonnes — due to decreasing harvests, deficiency of imported seeds and problems with accounting and logistics. Farmers can gather only 100 million tons of grain this year, which, according to Złoczewski, would be a failure. Last year the harvest amounted to 125 million tonnes and in 2022 it reached a evidence of 153.8 million tonnes.
The Russian-Chinese land grain corridor task was launched in 2017 and according to plans of the Ministry of Agriculture of Moscow by 2028 was to scope a capacity of 52 million tonnes of grain per year. In the fall of 2023, the fresh Siberian production and export company EPT announced the signing of an agreement with China Chengtong global for the supply of 70 million tonnes of cereals, legumes and oilseeds with a full value of 2.5 trillion rubles (about PLN 101.6 billion).
The agreement, which was presented with the pump in the framework of the global Cooperation Forum 1 Belt, 1 Road, most likely not binding, was a "memorandum of intent," said Dmitri Ryłko, Director-General of the Agricultural marketplace Koniunkture Institute. According to his estimates, no more than 3.5 million tonnes of grain can be exported to China from the Ural, Siberia and the Far East regions. He stated that they simply did not have high-quality wheat in the region with a protein content of 14.5 percent in the required quantities.
