China taps corn reserve to ease shortage

China, the world’s second -- biggest corn consumer, is tapping its rarely used regular reserves of the grain in its weekly auctions to ease a shortage caused by lower production in the major growing provinces. The government will auction 1 million metric tonnes of corn on June 11 supplied from both temporary reserves in four northeast provinces and regular stockpiles, the Hefei National Grain Trade Center said on its website late yesterday.

China has sought to cool record domestic prices by boosting imports to the highest level in 14 years and by selling inventories. China has offered 5.7 million tonnes from temporary stockpiles in Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Jilin and Inner Mongolia, and sold 99 per cent of them, according to Bloomberg data.