Friday, March 22, 2002
China opens doors for farm products
REUTERS
SINGAPORE: China has started handing out 2002 import quotas for agricultural products, opening the door to its huge market as Beijing has promised to the WTO, traders said on Friday.
They said some companies had received low-tariff-rate import quotas (TRQs) for vegetable oils, such as palm oil and soyoil, as Beijing was releasing the quotas by products.
No Chinese government officials were immediately available for comment.
Beijing's pledges to the WTO include 2002 imports of up to 8.5 million tonnes of wheat, 5.85 million tonnes of corn, two million tonnes of rice, 2.52 million tonnes of soyoil and 2.4 million tonnes of palm oil under the TRQ scheme.
To protect its hundred of millions of farmers, China in the past had strictly limited imports of those agricultural products, with almost no imports of corn or wheat over the past few years.
Some traders said it had begun delivering import quotas for corn. Beijing was expected to complete the announcement of TRQ allocations by the end of next week.
A trader at a Chinese state company confirmed quotas for some 10,000 tonnes of palm oil had been given to COFCO, the country's state-owned trading company.
But COFCO traders said they were unaware of any quotas being issued to them.
Many palm oil cargoes were already waiting at Chinese ports for customs clearance. Buyers had shipped them in advance on concerns that prices would rise when the large portion of allocations are announced next week and China starts buying, the trader said.
In the soyoil market, a trader at a major international house based in Beijing said: "Two companies silently got part of the TRQs. They are using that to clear the customs."
The trader said one of them had already used the TRQ to import about 17,000 tonnes of soyoil from South Korea as the cargo had to land in China before March 20, when the country's rules on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) take effect.
One palm oil dealer from a Kuala Lumpur trading house said he heard that Beijing had handed out import licences to several firms.
"My Beijing office also told me the amount was between 50,000 to 70,000 tonnes. I was also told the rest of the quotas will be released next week," he said.
Freight brokers in Kuala Lumpur said between 250,000 and 400,000 tonnes of palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia were piling up at ports in China on expectations that Beijing would release the import licences soon.
Traders around Asia said they had not heard of TRQs being issued for rice, rubber and sugar.
Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.