IKAR in Mass and Industry Media

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

Reuters

MOSCOW, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Russia, the world's top sugar buyer, will keep its raw cane sugar import tariff at $140 per tonne in October, unchanged for the last 12 months, the Economy Ministry said on its Web site (http://www.economy.gov.ru>www.economy.gov.ru) on Monday.

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

Russia refined over 3 million tonnes of white sugar from imported raws last year, up from 2.59 million tonnes in 2004. This year the country expects a record beet sugar output of 3 million tonnes. Analysts expect a decline in raw sugar imports.

Yevgeny Ivanov of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) has estimated Russia's raw sugar imports this year would fall to about 2.3 million tonnes from 2.9 million.

IKAR said last week the planned setting of a new scale of the raw sugar import tariff, which Russia uses to regulate sugar imports, had been delayed.

The current rate is the lowest, and analysts have said it will stay unchanged until the end of the year.

But after internal sugar prices rose over 30 percent in February -- a major contributor to a monthly rise in consumer price inflation -- the Russian Sugar Producers Union proposed to adjust the regime from 2007.

The union has sent the government a proposal to keep the upper limit of the tariff at $270 per tonne, corresponding to an average sugar price on the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) of 10.5-11.0 U.S. cents per pound.

It proposed to apply a zero tariff at prices of 22 U.S. cents per pound or higher and to change the upper tariff to $250 per tonne if Russia joins the WTO.

04.10.06

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