Kazakhstan faces grain shortage in 2013
By Aynur Jafarova
Kazakhstan, which is among the world's major grain exporters, has faced grain shortage this year.
"The shortage of grain in Kazakhstan in 2013 was 84,923 tons with a total damage of 3.4 billion tenge (150.9 tenge equals $1)," Chairman of the Committee for State Inspection in Agro-Industrial Complex of the Ministry of Agriculture, Almabek Mars, said on Tuesday.
Mars said at a briefing that over two years, the Ministry of Agriculture revealed grain shortage in ten grain plants, which is "a systemic problem that is exacerbated during poor harvest field, and thus the price of grain increases". Thus, in 2012 the shortage amounted to 57,272 tons of grain, and the amount of farmers' damages made up about 2.3 billion tenge, he said.
According to Mars, the law "On State Control and Supervision", adopted in January 2011, allows the Ministry of Agriculture to conduct scheduled inspections no more often than once in half a year.
In order to eliminate violations, the ministry initiated amendments to the law for increasing the number of scheduled inspections of elevators to once a month. Currently, the bill is under consideration at the Majilis, the lower house of the Kazakh parliament, Mars said. He added that thus, grain receiving facilities will not have time to sell grain transferred to them for storage.
Earlier, Deputy Agriculture Minister Muslim Umiryayev said that Kazakhstan plans to establish a single grain holding on the basis of the Kazakh Food Contract Corporation.
Also, the Ministry of Agriculture said earlier that Kazakhstan plans to export up to 7.8 million tons of grain in 2013.
According to the ministry's report, thanks to water saving technologies, farmers collected 12.9 million tons of grain in 2012.
"This amount not only meets the needs of the domestic market, but also allows to export some 7.8 million tons," the ministry said.