Bangladesh buying bumps up Australia’s chickpea exports

Bangladesh buying bumps up Australia’s chickpea exports

BUYING from Bangladesh has lifted Australia’s chickpea exports in November to their highest monthly level in three months, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Bangladesh took 17,518t of Australia’s November chickpea exports, or 65 per cent of the monthly total, with the United Arab Emirates on 3334t and Pakistan with 2544t the next biggest buyers.

While not as high as total August chickpea shipments of 28,456t, the November shipment figure chickpea is more than double the October tonnage, and up 88pc on the September amount.

Australian Choice Exports managing director James Hunt said Pakistan’s terms of trade had being eroded by its devalued currency, but it was still likely to join Bangladesh in buying Australian chickpeas for shipment up to February-March ahead of Ramadan.

“Pakistan will have some crop of their own in April, but we would still expect some more interest from Bangladesh and Pakistan,” Mr Hunt said.

South Asia’s monsoon season runs from July to September, and delivered below-average rainfall to key pulse-growing areas in India’s north.

While traders are hopeful India, traditionally Australia’s biggest chickpea market, will soon reopen to imports, the country is still busy consuming its own rabi, or winter, crop harvested last year.

Traders said new-crop Australian chickpeas were coming predominantly from Central Queensland, which had a much better season than southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

New-crop chickpeas have been trading at up to $870/t delivered up-country packer, about $70/t more than chickpeas harvested in 2017.

Traders said stocks acquired by the now-defunct Special One Grain were helping to supply the old-crop market.

“Old-crop is coming from everywhere.”

Destination	Sep	Oct	Nov	Tonnes
Bangladesh	0	3991	17518	21510
Canada	618	716	917	2251
Fiji	24	0	23	47
India	119	0	237	357
Iran	0	121	0	121
Japan	21	0	0	21
Lebanon	3	0	0	3
Malaysia	22	72	0	94
Mauritius	98	100	25	223
Nepal	2164	1093	1310	4567
New Zealand	24	8	56	87
Pakistan	7718	3178	2544	13440
Papua New Guinea	1	0	0	1
Portugal	750	0	0	750
Singapore	24	0	0	24
South Africa	49	0	0	49
Spain	50	0	0	50
Sri Lanka	0	76	0	76
Thailand	24	0	24	48
United Arab Emirates	1858	70	3334	5263
United Kingdom	610	604	814	2028
USA	83	96	160	339
Yemen	75	0	0	75
TOTAL	14334	10125	26963	51422

Table 1: ABS data for Australia’s September, October and November 2018 chickpea exports.