The Ministry of agriculture does not waive dairy interventions

"Yes, there must be interventions, and no one refuses this tool. But we understand that buying stocks now, we will have to sell them later, in six months at a discount of minus 15%. That is, with our decisions we create the preconditions for “a bear market”, he said, noting that such a mechanism exists in the corresponding order of the Ministry of agriculture. "There was the order of the Ministry of agriculture, I speak frankly", he added. 

According to him, the milk market last year was speculatively warmed up. "Everyone stockpiled butter, milk powder – what for? For expected interventions. No one made advances, for example, for ice-cream producers. Thus, these reserves remained, he said.  Now the ones who have these stocks raise the question - where should we sell them? We always forget about the balance between supplies and needs."

A. Kutsenko compared the situation with the year 2015, when stocks were large enough. "Then the reduction in milk prices was significant. We got rid pretty well of the stocks in 2016, at the beginning of 2017 price conditions were good enough", he said

Plans to carry out purchasing interventions in the dairy market have existed for many years. We are talking about the procurement of milk powder and butter. Their implementation was restrained, in particular, by the fact that processing enterprises did not have the right to participate in such interventions. The law "On development of agriculture" permitted trading only for agricultural producers.

The processing enterprises received the right to participate in government intervention only in October 2017, when the government approved the relevant amendments to the rules of the intervention.

In November last year Minister of agriculture Alexander Tkachev declared to journalists that currently there was no need to carry out interventions.

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