KIEV (Reuters) – New rules to prevent farm exports below official minimum prices could come into effect as early as August, a senior Ukrainian agriculture ministry official said late on Wednesday.
The new export price mechanism will apply to shipments of wheat, corn, sunflower oil, soybeans, rapeseed and other agricultural products.
The chaos caused by the war with Russia has meant that some Ukrainian agricultural products are being bought domestically with cash to avoid taxes, and then exported at artificially low prices.
To raise revenue, the Ukrainian government has drawn up calculations to set minimum export prices for some agricultural products.
As per the new rules, the minimum permissible export price will be calculated based on state customs service data, taking into account the previous month’s delivery terms and applying a 10% discount.
“It won’t happen before August,” Deputy Agriculture Minister Mikhailo Sokolov told an online conference with analysts and traders.
Ukrainian parliament passed amendments to the law introducing the new rules in May, and Sokolov said the law would come into force on July 1.
Sokolov said the introduction of the minimum price mechanism still required the adoption of a number of government documents, but did not give an exact date when the new process would begin.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Michael Perry Editing)
