Imports of Raw Sugar Have a High Concentration of Source Countries in 2020

From January to December 2020, China has imported a total of 4.665 million tons of raw sugar, accounting for 88.12% of total sugar imports. At the same time, the import source countries of raw sugar have been reduced from 19 in 2019 to 13, and the proportion of import sources has a more concentrated tendency.
 
In 2020, the raw sugar in China mainly imported from Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador and other countries, with imports of 387.82 million tons, 460,000 tons and 182,500 tons, accounting for 83.14%, 9.86% and 3.91% respectively. The top three sources of raw sugar in 2019 were Brazil, Thailand, and Cuba, with imports of 139,02 million tons, 501,300 tons, and 427,700 tons, accounting for 47.61%, 17.17%, and 14.62%, respectively. Excluding the intergovernmental trade agreement that China imports 400,000 tons of raw sugar from Cuba each year, the raw sugar from Brazil has already dominated.
 
The reduction of import source countries is affected by various factors. First, international sugar production and export have obvious regional advantages. Brazil is one of the world's major sugar suppliers; second, price advantages. The average price of imported raw sugar from Brazil in 2020 is 320.71 US dollar/ton, lower than the prices of 369.41 US dollars/ton of Cuba, 412.62 US dollars/ton of El Salvador, 366.40 US dollars/ton of Thailand and 348.18 US dollars/ton of India; the third reason is that China has already imported 506,300 tons of syrup from Thailand in 2020. The syrup is used as an alternative to white sugar, which also squeezed the space for Thailand to export raw sugar to China.