No premises for selling grain from state fund; grain harvest will cover domestic market needs - Deputy Russian PM Patrushev

SIRIUS. May 31 (Interfax) - There are no premises for selling grain from the intervention fund with the grain harvest set to cover the domestic market's needs, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev said at the All-Russia Grain forum on Friday.

"The intervention fund is a fairly effective tool to monitor the availability of products on our domestic market. When the price is low we procured a lot of produce from the fund. If the price rises significantly, we start selling this produce from the intervention fund specifically to adjust the price. Today we don't see any premises for selling anything from the intervention fund. The volume of production enables us to feel quite comfortable, and even taking into account difficult weather conditions, the volume of grain that we plan to harvest will cover all the domestic market's needs," he said.

Patrushev said Russia would export 60 million tonnes of grain in the next agricultural year.

"My gut feeling tells me there should always be 10 million [tonnes] in the intervention fund. But that's a luxury we can't afford. We would have to spend a great deal of money on maintaining, on purchasing of that volume. And that money would be much better spent on other things, given there are certain fiscal constraints. In the situation we are in now, I think 3-5 million tonnes is enough. This is three months of supply to keep our flour mills operating," Patrushev said.

"I wish there could be more, that there could be a safety cushion, but it'd be too expensive," he said.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Maxim Titov said 4 million tonnes had been purchased for the intervention fund over the past two years. Procurement is ongoing.