Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MENA Region Pakistan has made “major amendments” to its biosafety regulations that it says will “simplify licensing procedures, ease import restrictions and facilitate laboratory research”. Companies will have to apply for licenses for specific GMO events which, when approved, would allow freedom for importation. Egypt continues to be the largest importer of wheat, importing as much as 13.0 MMT of wheat annually. The government has plans to increase local wheat production to 10 MMT and will purchase about 5.0 MMT for its subsidized bread program. Experts do not expect wheat imports to drop as population and consumption continue to increase. Also, private sector wh...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. and Chinese officials are expected to discuss agriculture and non-tariff trade barriers ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington later this month, potentially opening the door to additional U.S. agricultural purchases or improved marke...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk markets are mixed this week with larger vessel classes seeing strong demand from iron ore and coal while Supramax and Handysize rates remain steady. Congestion at the Panama Canal has eased but forward booking slots are showing signs of bottlenecks as draft levels...
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.