Moscow announced that the duty on wheat exports will be increased to 3,804.6 rubles ($41.3) per tonne from February 7, 2024, up from the current rate of 3,630.9 rubles ($40.2) per tonne. data of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The duty on barley will be 827 rubles ($9.1) per tonne, and the levy on corn will drop to 1,339.8 rubles ($14.73), down from 1,431.7 rubles ($15.98) per tonne.

The export duty rate for wheat is calculated at an indicative price of $251.1 per ton, for barley - $190.9 per ton, and for corn - $199.1 per ton.

At the same time, the Black Sea region continues to define the mood in the EU. The issue of the import of agricultural products from Ukraine was raised once again at the EU meeting on February 1, and the leaders of several countries called on the European Commission to ban the import of Ukrainian goods.

Belgian farmers staged protests in Brussels, calling for an embargo on supplies from Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he met and spoke with demonstrators near the hotel he was staying at during the meeting. According to him, "they asked the Poles, Slovaks and Hungarians to block Ukrainian supplies at the borders" of the European Union.

"We should not allow Ukrainian agricultural products on the European market. This is unfair. Farmers have been saying for years that their situation is getting worse," commented the prime minister, recalling that as a child he lived in a village and knows firsthand the problems of people engaged in agriculture. "I was a country boy," Orbán said.

Recent international visits show that the Black Sea grain is a factor not only in Europe. Last week, representatives of the logistics company "Russian Railways" made a business visit to the international sea port of Turkmenbashi, on the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea.

"The guests noted that it is possible to carry out regular shipments of grain crops between the ports of Makhachkala, the international sea port of Astrakhan-Turkmenbashi in the direction of Afghanistan and Iran, as well as the possibility of carrying out regular container shipments between the ports of Turkmenbashi-Astrakhan," the locals commented media.

The representatives of the Russian company also noted that they are also interested in delivering goods to the port of Turkmenbashi by sea from March 2024.

We remind you that Turkmenbashi International Seaport was put into operation in 2018. Its transshipment capacity is 17 million tons of dry cargo and 10 million tons of liquid cargo per year.