Latvia's grain product imports from Russia doubles in 2023

Russian grain circulating within the EU

At the same time, the value of grain imports from Russia to Latvia for the first 11 months of 2023 reached 73.529 million euros, which is 11.4% more than in the same period of 2022.

Compared to the corresponding period in 2022, corn imports increased by 68.4%, rye by 44.9%, wheat and wheat-rye mixtures by 19.6%, while triticale imports decreased by 84.3%. Barley was not imported during the accounting period of 2022.

The Revenue Service explained that goods that have undergone the import procedure or have been released for free circulation acquire the status of European Union goods and circulate freely within the EU territory. They can be consumed in Latvia or transported to another EU member state without undergoing customs procedures, including transit.

Transit of grain products

The data also shows that during the first 11 months of the previous year, Latvia facilitated the transit of 1.975 million tons of grain products from Russia, which is 2.3 times more than in the corresponding period of 2022 when 861,068 tons of grain were transited through Latvia.

Meanwhile, the transit of barley and oats significantly increased. While 49 tons of barley were transited in the first 11 months of 2022, 100,983 tons were transited in the same period of the previous year, and the volume of oat transit increased 16 times.

Sanctions against Russian agricultural products

At the beginning of this year, Latvia's Minister of Transport, Kaspars Briškens, stated that he plans to propose a ban on the import of Russian and Belarusian grain in the next package of EU sanctions against Russia.

It's worth noting that the proposal for sanctions against Russian agricultural products has been suggested before. For instance, in the summer of 2023, the Polish ambassador to the European Union proposed banning the import of Russian agricultural products into EU countries, as reported by Polish media.