Paul Martin's Business News February 18th, 2014
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Paul Martin's Business News February 18th, 2014
Concerns over the capacity of the Canadian rail system to move Saskatchewan grain to export position reached a new level last week when the Premier appointed a legislative committee to meet with the railways. The committee, including several cabinet ministers, is to see what can be done to get our biggest crop in history to market.
At a time when potash exports are soft, the urgency to get grain to market and the export revenues it generates is rising. And the magnitude of the problem is shown quite clearly in the most recent numbers on grain exports.
Now, we only have figures to the end of December and, given the urgency that now being shown we should probably extrapolate from that the situation is not improving. But, at the end of December, about the only commodity showing gains was flax exports. Wheat was down roughly 30-percent in the two months from October to December, falling to 1.1 million tonnes from 1.5.
Canola was even more pronounced, falling from 1.1 million tonnes in October to 650,000 in December – a decline in the 40 per cent range.
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