Miller Magazine Issue 137 May 2021

24 MILLER / may 2021 NEWS Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest buyers of wheat and barley, is preparing to sell some of its grain silos as part of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s privatization drive, Bloomberg reports. State-owned Saudi Grains Organization aims to start selling silo sites as soon as this year, according to people familiar with the matter. SAGO will seek bids from foreign and local firms, said the people. No decisions have been made and SAGO may retain the assets, they said. Under Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia has increased asset sales as it looks to open up and diversify the econ- omy from oil. The government is also trying to narrow a budget deficit that ballooned last year due to coronavirus lockdowns and a slump in energy prices. SAGO has been a key part of the kingdom’s privatization plans. In the past year, it sold all its flour mills to groups of local and international investors for about $1.5 billion. HSBC Holdings Plc advised it on all those transactions. SAGO has 3.3 million tons of grain-storage space, according to its website. The country, much of which is desert, vies with China as the biggest importer of barley, buying about 6.9 million tons annually. It uses the grain mostly to feed sheep, camels and goats. It also ships in around 3 million tons a year of wheat. BLOOMBERG Russian agriculture consultancy IKAR has downgraded its forecast for Russia’s 2021 wheat crop to 79.5 million tonnes from 81 million tonnes. The forecast was lowered as farmers will need to resow wheat on a large area of Russia’s central region after the winter, IKAR said. More than 700,000 hectares, about 18% of the region’s total area, will be up for potential replanting, though IKAR said it expected the actual resowed area to be smaller. There are other places where plantings in fields are “not in an optimal shape,” it added. Russian farmers were sowing winter grains in dry soil last autumn due to lack of rains. Some of their sowings were also affected by a rapid shift of weather from frosts to warmer temperatures in late winter, IKAR said. Sovecon, another Moscow-based consultancy, also said earlier that farmers in some Russia’s central regions reported that a high percentage of their winter wheat sowings were in bad condition after winter. Saudi Arabia to sell grain silos IKAR lowers Russia wheat crop forecast