BEIJING (Reuters) — China, the world’s top wheat consumer, will import two million tonnes of the grain in the 2015-16 crop year, up a third from the relatively low levels in the previous year, according to a forecast by an official think tank on Thursday.
The country’s output in 2015 is expected to be 127 million tonnes, up 0.9 percent from last year, said the China National Grains and Oils Information Centre.
Wheat yields have increased by 0.6 percent, according to the centre, while acreage sown with wheat has gone up slightly.
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But despite the overall growth in output, China faces a shortage of the high protein wheat it needs to meet growing appetite for bread and other baked products as incomes rise.
Imports are tightly controlled by government quota, which are usually issued in January each year.
Much of the 2014 quota was used up in the first half of that year, causing import volumes to decline during the 2014-15 season starting in June 2014.
In addition, buyers can usually use their new annual quotas in the final months of a crop year.
But Beijing delayed the issue of its 2015 quotas in order to adjust the allocation system and quotas only started to reach the market in April. That means imports will not pick up until the start of the 2015-16 year.
Buyers had booked almost 600,000 tonnes from Canada and Australia in March.
Overall wheat consumption in China is projected to fall by 3.3 percent in 2015-16 to 118.5 million tonnes, with consumption by feed producers dropping almost 11 percent to 12.5 million tonnes, the report said.
