Genetically modified rules may curb corn imports this year

Introduction: the detailed rules for the implementation of the regulations on the safety management of agricultural genetically modified organisms, which attracted the attention of the market, came out on January 7 It immediately caused waves and waves in the domestic and foreign grain and oil markets and rolled up thousands of snow on the ground Dalian soybean futures trading board for two consecutive days, CBOT soybean also rebounded strongly According to the GM rules, overseas companies exporting agricultural products to China must obtain safety certificates from the Ministry of agriculture to confirm that these products are harmless to people, animals and the environment In addition, the certificate must have been obtained before the contract was signed All imported GM soybeans, corn, rapeseed, cottonseed and tomatoes must be clearly identified as GM products After studying the detailed rules, the basic spirit of the detailed rules is not to refuse to import, but to conduct more perfect and detailed inspection and quarantine for the sake of safety Based on this point, the author believes that after the implementation of the GM rules on March 20, the import of corn in China will slow down this year, but the slowing down does not mean that the absolute import quantity will decrease this year 2002 is the first year after China's accession to the WTO According to the WTO commitments, in order to reduce the import tariff of corn, the country must arrange a certain quota of corn import There are four tariff levels within the quota of corn import, namely: 0%, 1%, 9% and 35% This year, China will arrange a quota of 4.5 million tons with 1% low import tariff The detailed rules for the implementation of the regulations on the administration of the safety of agricultural genetically modified organisms will limit the import to a certain extent and increase the import cost Qualitatively speaking, the impact of the detailed rules on the domestic corn market is favorable, which is reflected in the increase of capital cost and time cost of corn import As for labeling, the increased import cost is not large, in essence, a procedure has been added However, the time and risk cost of corn import will be increased to a certain extent when overseas companies apply for safety certificates and domestic importers obtain import approval documents According to the measures, the imported agricultural genetically modified organisms without the safety certificate and relevant approval documents of agricultural genetically modified organisms issued by the agricultural administrative department of the State Council, or inconsistent with the certificates and approval documents, shall be returned or destroyed In this way, when general traders order goods, they should not only consider the market price, but also consider whether they can get the certificate and the time to get the certificate The method stipulates that the approval period is 270 days, which further increases the risk of import operation In this link, the possible increased costs cannot be calculated by figures, because if the relevant departments strictly control the issuance of certificates and approval documents, the risk of import will tend to be infinite It should be said that the fuzziness of this provision is to facilitate the management of imports by the state The specific implementation of this method will have different impacts on the market depending on the loose and tight management of the relevant departments on the issuance of safety certificates and approval documents according to the method The formal implementation of the detailed rules will take place on March 20 It is estimated that before and after this time, the willingness of traders to sign import contracts may increase, even if there is a reverse signing agreement However, due to the attention of relevant departments, there will be no sharp increase in import contracts Although the regulations on the safety management of agricultural genetically modified organisms restrict the domestic import of genetically modified corn to the United States to some extent, the domestic trade chamber of Commerce will turn to Argentina, Brazil and other South American countries to import non genetically modified corn We believe that in order to protect the domestic corn market and reduce the impact of imported corn on the domestic market after low tariff, the state needs to do everything to increase corn exports to balance it In this year's domestic corn market supply slightly exceeds the demand, the result of China's corn import and export is that the price will gradually be in line with the international corn market price.