EU: The EU licence figures remain the only valid statistics of malt exports

Eurostat published the malt export numbers for 2006: 2.374 million tonnes to third countries, 1.284 million tonnes intra-EU.

Regrettably these figures are wrong again, market analysts commented on May 2nd. During the year 2006 malt exporters booked licences for 1.954 million tonnes, 418,000 tonnes less the export statistics show, and exports without licences are not possible.

The major or even only source of error is Belgium, where shipments of French, German, Dutch and British malt through the port of Antwerp are registered as Belgian exports, but they are also counted in their countries of origin. Belgium has a malting capacity of 750,000 tonnes, but exported 1.32 million tonnes in 2006 as per Eurostat.

The wrong accounting makes also comparisons of countries of destination useless, especially overseas countries served through Belgian ports. The EU licence figures remain the only valid statistics of malt exports.

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