IKAR in Mass and Industry Media

Russian 2009 sugar beet area 2.5 pct down on year

Reuters

MOSCOW, June 9 (Reuters) - The area sown in Russia with sugar beets for this year's crop has shrunk 2.5 percent year-on-year to 798,000 hectares the country's sugar lobby, the Russian Sugar Producers' Union, said on Tuesday.

The lobby said in a statement that Russia had finished sowing sugar beets by June 8 this year.

The union said in May it expected output of sugar from this year's crop to decline to 3.1-3.2 million tonnes from last year's record 3.5 million tonnes.

The Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) said in its monthly sugar report on Thursday it expected Russian beet sugar output to be 3.0-3.1 million tonnes.

Russia, which was the world's largest sugar buyer until it was overtaken by the European Union in 2008/09, refines more than half of the white sugar it consumes from domestically grown beet and most of the remainder from imported cane raws.

Russia consumed 5.7 million tonnes of white sugar in 2008. The lobby has said consumption could fall by some 300,000 tonnes due to the financial crisis, which may cut output of confectionery, soft drinks and ice cream.

The union said in March that Russian raw sugar imports this year could fall to 2 million tonnes from 2.29 million tonnes in 2008.

IKAR said Russia's raw sugar imports fell to 789,200 tonnes from November 2008 to May 2009 from 1,295,600 tonnes in the same period a year ago.

But May imports rose to over 331,864 tonnes from 220,163 thousand a year ago and 148,330 in April 2009 as the country had lovered an import tariff on raw sugar to $165 per tonne from $220 from May 1.

Imports in June are expected to be 350,000 tonnes compared to 419,007 in June last year, IKAR said.

"The decline in imports is continued to be compensated by large white sugar stocks, which were 1.51 million tonnes by the end of March," it said.

16.06.09

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