KYIV, Aug 12 — Ukraine’s grain harvest this year is exceeding expectations and could be 5 per cent higher than in 2022 thanks to favourable weather, a senior agriculture ministry official said today.

Ukraine is a major global grain producer and exporter but its production has been affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.

"This (the harvest) is more than expected; thanks to good weather and rains in the summer, production could be 5 per cent higher than in 2022,” Taras Vysotskyi, the first deputy agriculture minister, told national television.

He did not give an estimated volume for the harvest, but said farmers had already threshed around 23 million metric tonnes of grain.

The ministry said this week it saw 2023 grain output at around 56.4 million tonnes, or 2 per cent more than in 2022.

It also said farmers had harvested 17.7 million tonnes of wheat and 4.9 million tonnes of barley as of August 11, and the grain yield averaged 4.37 tonnes per hectare. — Reuters