Cane Sugar Imports Grow

The growth in cane sugar imports reflects the general situation in the Ukrainian sugar market: reduction in the domestic supply of granulated sugar produced from sugar beets against the backdrop of growing demand, primarily, in the food industry, and increased profitability of transactions with raw sugar owing to high prices for white sugar on the local market and low prices for raw sugar on world markets. The average customs value of the raw sugar imported into Ukraine from January to July 1999 was $212.20 per ton, compared to $250.10 in the corresponding period of 1998. Simultaneously, raw sugar imports this year are much lower than in January- July 1996, when 438,800 tons were imported. However, such high imports into Ukraine were encouraged by favorable pricing and customs conditions in the Russian market, which allowed white sugar, produced from the raw sugar imported in Ukraine, to be exported to Russia.

In 1999, major exporters of cane sugar to Ukraine were Brazil (106,600 tons), Cuba (25,400 tons) and El Salvador (25,100 tons). The geography of imports is practically unchanged as compared to the previous year.

In the current year, the imported sugar was processed at six sugar refineries in Ukraine, and the major producers of granulated sugar from the imported raw sugar were Shelton-Mykolayiv (23,900 tons of white sugar produced from January to July 1999), Zaplazhsky Sugar Refinery in Odesa oblast (19,200 tons), and Dubnotsukor in Rivne oblast (17,500 tons). In the seven months of this year Ukrainian sugar refineries have produced almost 92,000 tons of granulated sugar from imported raw material (for the whole 1998, a total of 87,900 tons of white sugar was produced in Ukraine from imported cane sugar).