India may get to export more wheat in global markets

INTERNATIONAL DESK: The Russia-Ukraine conflict would have nil or negligible impact on India’s foreign trade, and the crisis may give domestic exporters an opportunity to ship more wheat in the global markets, sources said on Thursday.

India’s central pool stood at 24.2 million tonnes, twice more than the buffer and strategic needs, they said.

More than a quarter of the world’s wheat export comes from Russia and Ukraine.

Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, accounting for more than 18 per cent of international exports.

In 2019, Russia and Ukraine together exported more than a quarter (25.4 per cent) of the world’s wheat.

Egypt, Turkey and Bangladesh bought more than half of Russia’s wheat, they said.

Egypt is the world’s biggest importer of wheat. It spends more than $4 billion annually to feed its population of over 100 million.

Russia and Ukraine cover more than 70 per cent of Egypt’s imported wheat demand.

Turkey is also a big spender on Russian and Ukrainian wheat with 74 per cent of its imports worth $1.6 billion coming from those two countries in 2019.

“The crisis in Ukraine may give India an opportunity to export more wheat, provided we ship out more, as our central pool stood at 24.2 million tonnes, twice more than the buffer and strategic needs,” the sources added.

India’s biggest item of import from Ukraine is animal and vegetable fats and oils.

“But, the the current situation will not adversely impact India’s trade position as the share of this commodity out of India’s total imports of this item from across the world stands at only 10 per cent,” one of the sources said.

Top-five countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of wheat include Russia ($7.9 billion), United States ($6.32 billion), Canada ($6.3 billion), France ($4.5 billion) and Ukraine ($3.6 billion).

Total exports to Russia is $2 billion and to Ukraine $0.5 billion, which is less than even one per cent of India’s total exports.

“The way Indian exports have been diversified and the speed at which they are growing, the impact is negligible or almost nil,” the sources said.

India imports around $7 billion from Russia and $2 billion from Ukraine.

The main product of imports from Russia is oil and there are enough other substitute sources available to fill in that, the sources said.

“The economy and India’s foreign trade has become resilient enough to absorb the impact of such events of global significance without much attrition,” they added. (PTI)