According to Sergey Levin, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, the Russian Federation Ministry of Agriculture considers it necessary to change agricultural export structure in accordance with foreign markets consumption peculiarities.
“Foreign markets have different food patterns and customers’ demand thus they need different products which we have not been producing for the domestic market before. It concerns all groups of goods”, – he said.
Mr Levin pointed out that crops group comprised not less than 40% of total export for the last years. “Of course, we will continue to increase its supply to the world market but only with wheat we will not reach the number of $45 bln of export, so we need to restructure the export. This is the core of our work with regions at present”, – he added.
To the Deputy Minister’s mind fat-and-oil industry should become one of the major export growth drivers. Production of the industry should also undergo significant technological alterations. Besides, expansion of export grain legumes should take place as well, more bean cultures are necessary. Food and processing industry production and sales should also be expanded, that will stimulate products added value increase, considers Mr Levin.
“We are among the leaders by the volume of agricultural products export. However, there is no doubts that we are going far behind the world leaders by the unit cost of a ton of products”, – he said and noticed that the retardation is more than four times.
According to Mr Levin, another problem is not transparent export structure for the regions. “Major export is going through two regions: Moscow and Krasnodar, I mean by the data of the Federal Customs Service. Meanwhile regions count export products manufacturing by their enterprises which are regional residents”, – he remarked. Deputy Minister underlined the necessity of creation of reporting system which is understandable and transparent for the regions and Federal Government. This system should provide state support measures for the regions.
He added that the Ministry of Agriculture is now working on this task.
Source: TASS