India Witnessed Fall In Wheat Imports, Indonesia Becomes No 1 Surpassing Egypt
Wheat import is getting the speedier track in major developing nations due to higher consumption. Continuous slow trade, let India witness the drop of wheat imports. On the other hand, Indonesia surpassed Egypt to become world’s number one wheat importer.
A potential consumption growth in developing countries around the world is continuously impacting the global wheat trade. Pushing trade to record levels, providing a rising tide for wheat suppliers. On the other hand for the purpose of being farmer friendly and due to higher productions, India had witnessed a fall of 500 million tonne in imports. Imports of wheat got down from 2500 MT to 2000 MT this year with a slow trade as a reason.
The new chapter is that Indonesia has been forecasted by global agriculture information network of US department of agriculture as Largest Wheat Importer reason being increasingly supplied by the Black Sea Nations to Indonesia. Indonesia is forecast to be the largest wheat importer for the year 2017-18 at 12.5 million metric tons, surpassing Egypt, which has traditionally been the top wheat importer. Indonesia wheat imports have been growing based on food and feed demand. Population and incomes are rising and diets are moving towards Western trends of pastries, instant noodles, and poultry. Even though there are feed wheat import restrictions, lower-priced milling wheat is still an affordable ingredient to process into feed rations.
Major Wheat Importers of World
(Source: World Grain Market Trade Report, USDA)
Traditionally, Indonesia’s top four wheat suppliers can be ranked in order of highest to lowest – ‘Australia, Canada, Ukraine, and the United States’. However, competitively priced black Sea wheat continues to put pressure on high-quality suppliers by offering wheat at a much lower price. So far in the year 2017-18, those top suppliers have changed to Ukraine, Australia, Russia, and Canada. To date (July-November 2017), imports from Ukraine have surpassed those of Australia, a long-time top supplier of wheat to Indonesia with a market share of around 50 per cent or more. Not only is Ukraine robbing Australia of its major market, Russia has now made an entrance into Indonesia.
The Possible Global Trend
For the year 2017-18, global production has raised to a new record, based on larger crops in Argentina, Moldova, and Ukraine. Global trade, already a record, has been forecasted to witness an up from last month. Imports are forecast higher for Indonesia but lower for India and the European Union. Higher exports for Argentina, Canada, Pakistan and Russia more than offset lower forecasts for the United States and the European Union.
