(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s Agricultural Business Chamber has raised its forecast for the country’s corn exports for the year ending April 2025 to 1.9 million tons.
The increase, from a previous estimate of 1.85 million tons and an earlier forecast of 1.44 million tons, is due to higher-than-expected stocks carried over from the last season and a slight decrease in forecast domestic consumption, Wandile Sihlobo, the chamber’s chief economist, said in a statement sent to Bloomberg on Wednesday.
Of the exports, 1.2 million tons will likely be yellow corn and 700,000 tons white corn, the chamber said. It’s still a significant decline from last season’s shipments of 3.4 million tons. White corn is mainly used for human consumption in southern Africa while the yellow variety is used as animal feed.
The projected increase may go some way toward easing supply shortages in countries such as Zimbabwe and Zambia, which have seen their own crops decimated by a drought triggered by the just-ended El Niño weather pattern.
Read: South African Corn-Export Forecast Raised in Boon for Neighbors
Since the beginning of May, Zimbabwe has imported about 333,000 tons of white corn from South Africa and 178,000 tons of the yellow variety, according to the South African Grain Information Service.
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(Updates with Zimbabwe imports in last paragraph. An earlier version of the story corrected the tonnages of corn varieties in third paragraph.)
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