St. Petersburg could experience a bread shortage in the near future, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing a letter between government officials.
Russia was the biggest wheat exporter in the world in 2017.
But in the letter, St. Petersburg governor Georgy Poltavchenko warns Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich that a shortage of train carriages for domestic wheat deliveries could result in a bread deficit.
The excessive number of carriages allocated for exports is depriving the St. Petersburg milling industry of its own – damaging supply chains, driving up prices and creating a shortage of bakery products, the St. Petersburg governor writes.
The letter was sent after St. Petersburg’s most important wheat suppliers, the Orenburg, Saratov, Samara, Novosibirsk and Omsk regions, were included in a list of priority regions for grain export.
The largest flour mills in the St. Petersburg region have already faced train shortages, Kommersant reports.
As a solution, Russia’s Transport Ministry has proposed to start shipping wheat on weekends, Kommersant reports.
