PERM, February 14. /TASS/. The Russian dairy market will be stable this year, General Director of the National Dairy Producers Union of Russia (Soyuzmoloko) Artyom Belov said at the Agro-technologies-2024 Forum.

"The incremental consumption of the domestic market will be about 3% [in 2024], exports will grow by about 20%, and imports will remain relatively stable. We will see adjustments in inventories [of dry skimmed milk] and we will return to normal inventories we observed over the last seven years. So the market should be balanced, although there may be some variability with exports," Belov noted.

The domestic market may be unstable this year because of a surplus in expected dairy exports, the executive said. "Certain preconditions are in place for that. We launched deliveries to non-CIS countries, with Algeria being the main one. Furthermore, supplies to Tunisia, the Philippines and Malaysia began last year," Belov said. "Algeria is the second-largest dairy importer; it imports 400,000 metric tons of dry dairy products annually. This is three times more than Russia produces. If this market is indeed opened for us and we proactively supply products there, then the serious rise in export volumes could affect the domestic market balance from the standpoint of demand growth for commodities and as regards the price of finished goods," he noted.

No serious changes in dairy imports are expected, the expert said. "I do not see a big increase in imports as a possibility. This is because essentially nobody is delivering dairy products to Russia, except Belarus. There will be a certain change in the import structure but I do not think there will be any big change here," he added.

According to the association data, Russian dairy exports surged by 18% year on year in 2023 and totaled about one mln metric tons in milk equivalent.