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Review & Outlook
China¡¯s Wheat Import and Export in 2002
In 2002, the import and export of wheat in China shown two major characteristics: it is the first year in China that the total export volume of wheat is more than the import volume of wheat; China has started exporting a large volume of flour-making wheat rather than feed grade wheat.
According to the China¡¯s promises for being a WTO member the tariff rate quota (TRQ) for wheat in 2002 was 8.468 million metric tons (MMT). The actual import of wheat in 2002 was 0.6064 MMT, decreased 12.4% from 2001. Amongst that, 0.3726 MMT was from Canada, 0.1617 MMT was from USA and the rest was from Australia.
In 2002, only a small amount of TRQ was allocated to the private section and most of was not used due to the wheat price in the international market is relatively high. The 2003¡¯s TRQ was allocated in October 2002 and 90% was allocated to the state-owned companies while 10% was allocated to the private section.
There are several reasons why the wheat import was reduced in 2002. First, there were relatively too many private companies applied for TRQ and most of them only receive a small amount of TRQ, therefore, it was difficult for many of them to reach the scale of economics on importing wheat. Second, the state-owned grain warehouses released a large volume of old wheat and more high quality wheat was produced domestically, which depressed the domestic market price. Third, the reduction of wheat production in major wheat production countries caused that the international market price of wheat increased.
In 2002, China exported 0.6876 MMT of wheat, increased 51.1% from 2001, which included 0.5374 to Korea, 0.1027 MMT to Indonesia, 0.031 MMT to Philippines and the rest to Vietnam. It was the first year that China exported more wheat than its import.
China used to export feed grade wheat to Korea, Thailand and Philippines. Started in the second half of 2002, the flour-making wheat (food grade wheat) has imported by the countries in the Southeastern Asia. The exported food grade wheat was the winter wheat produced in Henan province. It is expected that the trend of wheat export will be continued at the first half of 2003.
China¡¯s Wheat Import and Export, 1995 ¨C 2002 Unit: metric ton
Year Wheat Import Wheat Export
1995 11,585,580 16,189
1996 8,245,961 0
1997 1,860,611 710
1998 1,489,403 6,020
1999 448,121 204
2000 880,000 2,500
2001 690,050 450,000
2002 604,570 687,620
Source: Statistics of China Customs
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