Regional Updates MIDDLE EAST/MEDITERRANEAN COMMENTS Morocco’s central bank has indicated that the country’s grain production will be down about 40 percent in 2019 but should not be of concern, adding that it is expected to increase again in 2020. The Moroccan economy is not anticipated to show much growth in 2019, and there will be little decline in unemployment along with slow growth in new jobs. The bank also stated that there has been a “considerable drop” in development funds from “generous Gulf donors” like Saudi Arabia. After saying said it had arranged financing with the Islamic Trade Finance Corp (ITFC) to cover recently-stated new terms of sight payments, Egypt’s GASC now says that all f...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.