Soybean Arrivals Might Slow Down Due to Reinforcement on GMO Certificate Management

By CnAgri2017-11-29 16:50:31 Print From the second half of 2017, China reinforced the control on the issuance of GMO certificates on varieties such as soybeans, rapeseeds and rapeseed meal. As a result, some agricultural product traders’ imports were affected. According to the information, recently, MOA’s GMO certificate passing rate was only 20%. Due to extended review time, the soybean loading and warehouse entry time were increased. According to preliminary understanding, at least 20 ships and about 1.2 million tons of soybeans were affected including enterprises such as Cargill, Jinguang and Noble. 
 
On the whole, at present, as certificates were applied for most of the shipping soybeans in November, so these were not influenced much. However, it is not clear how great the impact would be in December.
According to MOA’s policies on GMO:
 
a. The management on GMO is a long-term management;
b. GMO is an important means in controlling oilseed import, especially soybean import;
c. The overall management on GMO soybean import and processing would be reinforced. The random check would not be notified ahead of time. The certificate issuance would be suspended immediately if violations were found.
 
The “long-term policy” and “an important means in controlling the imports” made it more difficult to predict. 
 
According to our prediction, soybean arrivals might slow down due to the reinforcement on GMO certificates. However, a steady growth would still be found in China’s soybean import in the future.