Kazakhstan lacks 10 thousand wagons for grain export

Kazakhstan lacks wagons for grain export, Tengrinews.kz reports. Minister of Agriculture talked about the problems of storage and transportation of grain at the Ministry’s board meeting on February 3. “We currently need to export at least one million tons of grain every month. We are currently working on buying new wagons at Kazakhstan Temir Zholy. We have our own suggestion on activation of this work. We suggest to establish a joint company with ProdCorporation (Food Corporation) and increase the volume of planned wagons. We think that we need at least 5 thousand additional wagons besides the existing 5,200. Ideally Kazakhstan needs around 15 thousand wagons that would allow it to export around 1 million tons of grain every month,” Agriculture Minister Mamytbekov said. “We need to construct additional elevators. There is deficiency of them in three main grain producing regions; around 1.5 million tons of grain lack proper storage,” he added. According to the Ministry’s information, Kazakhstan had a bumper grain harvest in 2011: 1700 kilograms per one hectare. 27 thousand tons of grain were harvested. This enable to country to potentially export twice as much grain as usual.