India Says ‘No Immediate Plan’ to Allow Wheat Exports

India, the world’s second-biggest wheat grower, has “no immediate plan” to lift ban on exports and will instead boost open-market sales and increase supplies to the poor to pare stockpiles, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said. “There is no question of allowing wheat exports,” he told reporters in New Delhi. “We will consider allocating more wheat to the Above Poverty Line families.” Retaining the curb may ease pressure on wheat prices which have slid 27 percent from last year’s high of $6.77 a bushel in Chicago amid increasing world supplies. Global output may total 678 million tons, up from 677.441 million tons estimated a month earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said March 10. May-delivery wheat fell as much as 1.2 percent to $4.905 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after closing 1.9 percent higher yesterday. India’s government needs to empty its warehouses to create room for this year’s record harvest, Pawar said March 4. Output may top 80.28 million tons, swelling reserves to 14.71 million tons on April 1, twice the quantity needed to meet emergencies. Reserves on March 1 were 18.38 million tons, more than four times the buffer requirement, according to farm ministry data. “Storage is a worrying factor,” Pawar said today. Stockpiles of wheat and rice totaled 47 million tons as of March 1, prompting the finance ministry to say last month that “urgent attention” must be given to paring storage costs that are placing a “lot of stress on the fiscal system.” India halted exports of wheat in February 2007 and common rice varieties in April 2008 to cool domestic prices.