IKAR in Mass and Industry Media

Russia keeps May raw sugar import duty at $140/T

Reuters

MOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) - Russia, the world's top sugar buyer, said on Friday it would keep its raw cane sugar import tariff at $140 per tonne in May, flat on the previous seven months.

Under the Russian tariff calculation scheme the rate is set each month. The rate is pegged to the average New York futures price for the three preceding months.

The Russian Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) forecast that the tariff would remain unchanged at least until August, while imports of raws would keep rising.

"Imports of raw sugar to Russia stood at 780,000 tonnes in the first quarter. Imports were significantly higher than in the same period of last year, when they were just 555,000 tonnes," IKAR said in a note.

IKAR expects Russia to import around 300,000 tonnes of raw sugar in April.

Russia's sugar prices, which rose in February by over 30 percent month-on-month, were one of the main contributors to a monthly rise in consumer price inflation that hit 1.7 percent.

In mid-March, the government said it might alter the scheme it uses for setting the tariff to reign in domestic prices and curb inflation. But sugar prices stabilised in March.

IKAR said it did not expect any changes to the import tariff scheme at least until January 2007.

It said a rise in the number of sugar importers in March to 14 compared to nine a year ago increased competition on the market and pushed the prices down.

Benchmark Krasnodar price declined to $671,5 per tonne on March 27 from $777.7 on Feb. 27, while prices in Moscow slid to $710.9 from $905.5, IKAR said.

"In the last few days prices were stable on the market and a downward trend appeared," IKAR said.

"In April, no price fluctuations are expected on the domestic market, unless there is a significant rise on the (world) exchanges. One cannot exclude that the current state of things on the market will not change until summer."

Russia refined over 3 million tonnes of white sugar from imported raws last year, up from 2.59 million in 2004.

07.04.06

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