Russia and Saudi Arabia have signed a memorandum on expanding agricultural trade between the two countries, with shrimp comprising one of the most important parts of the new agreement.
The document was inked by Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of the Environment, Water Resources and Agriculture Abdurahman Al-Fadli during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Kingdom in the middle of October. The Arab country is seeking to sell more shrimp to Russia, which it produces through aquaculture.
Agriculture is an issue of special interest in relations between the two countries, as it amounts to USD 500 million (EUR 451 million) of trade turnover between the countries.
Saudi authorities have poured great effort into the developing the country’s aquaculture, and are now trying to gain new export markets for the country’s seafood beyond the European Union, China, and the United States
In September this year, a high-ranked delegation of Saudi Arabia held talks with representatives of the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, the country agriculture watchdog on possible export of shrimp to Russia. The central topic of the negotiations was getting permission for sale of frozen vannamei and Indian white shrimp in Russia.
According to St. Petersburg-based The Northern Shrimp company, the Russian shrimp market is almost 55,000 metric tons (MT) a year, with boiled-frozen shrimp product costing RUB 700 (USD 10.94, EUR 9.81) per kilogram, freshly frozen RUB 1,100 (USD 17.20, EUR 15.41), and chilled shrimp RUB 2,500 (USD 39.09, EUR 35.02).
Russia’s shrimp production was only 30,000 MT in 2018, which evidently leaves room for import. But there is a strong increase in domestic production; it has gone up more than twofold since 2014, when only 12,100 MT was caught and harvested.
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