Major importing countries have seen a sharp drop in demand for Indian maize

05-Sep-2024 11:23 AM

Mumbai. There is a fierce competition among animal feed and poultry feed industries, starch manufacturing units and ethanol manufacturers to acquire as much maize as possible,

due to which the domestic market price of this important coarse grain has increased much higher than the global market price.

As a result, major traditional importing countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Nepal are now preferring to import maize from countries like the US, Brazil and Argentina instead of India.

The starch manufacturing industry consumes 60-70 lakh tonnes of maize every year.

Vietnam has drastically reduced its import of Indian maize in recent months as its price has been very high.

Other countries have also almost stopped buying maize from India. Indian exporters are not in a position to offer maize exports to foreign importers at competitive price levels.

Due to the rapid increase in the use of maize in ethanol production, its domestic market price has jumped, which is badly affecting its export performance and there is little chance of improvement in performance in the future.

In the current Kharif season, the sowing area of ​​maize at the national level has increased to 87.27 lakh hectares, which is 4.41 lakh hectares more than last year's area of ​​82.86 lakh hectares, but in view of the damage to the crop due to floods and rains in some areas, its total production is not expected to increase much.

The government has increased the minimum support price of maize by 6.3 percent to Rs 2225 per quintal for the 2024-25 season, which has further increased the difficulty for exporters.

The price of maize in the global market has come down to the lowest level in the last four years, while its price in India is continuously rising and strengthening.