African nations, in addition to other countries, are stepping up their wheat purchases from Russia, says Elena Tyurina, director of the analytics department of the Russian Grain Union (RGU).
Elena Tyurina stated that exports have grown significantly year-on -year.
"This season we see that deliveries to Africa have been quite robust, February's demand is at a high level, yet these deliveries are not within the [Black Sea] grain deal, but simply guided by demand in these countries," Tyurina clarified.
Among the reasons for the upsurge in grain deliveries, the RGU official named calculations in Russian rubles, adding that the competitiveness of Russian products is also one of the "support factors".
"Perhaps the growth of shipments is also affected by the fact that with our main customers – Turkey, Egypt – we are starting to make payments in rubles," Tyurina outlined.
The analytics department director also highlighted Algeria's active February purchases, namely of about 60,000 tons. By comparison, during this same period last year, wheat from the Russian Federation was not shipped to the North African country, reports note.
According to the RGU, 3.7 million tons of grain crops were exported from Russia in February 2023, which turned out to be 35.4% more than in February 2022, and this includes a 37.6-percent hike in wheat shipments reaching 3.05 million tons. Its shipments were quite active at the beginning of the next month. For example, from March 1 to March 5, they soared 86% to 730,000 tons, and were bound for Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Kenya, as well as Turkey.
"Basically, the demand for Russian wheat is quite high. If you look at the countries, large importers are buying very actively: for example, in February supplies to Egypt quadrupled to more than 1 million tons," Tyurina stated.
On July 22, 2022, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations signed an agreement, which consists of two documents, on the provision of a humanitarian sea corridor for ships exporting food and fertilizers from Ukrainian Black Sea ports to alleviate the global food crisis, which has hit the poorest countries especially hard.
The second part of the deal is a memorandum between Russia and the UN for three years on the export of Russian agricultural products and fertilizers. The goal of the deal is to ensure unhindered supplies against the background of sanctions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Russian products are not entering world markets, as promised by the agreement. What's more, he emphasized that most of the ships delivering Ukrainian grain did not reach the poorest countries of the globe and ended up in Europe.
Recently political scientist and Associate Professor at the HSE Department of International Relations Andrey Suzdaltsev told Sputnik that only 3% of Ukrainian wheat under the grain deal went to countries facing food shortages, while the rest of the grain was exported to European countries.