Turkey’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister has dismissed speculations in some media outlets and social media platforms suggesting that the Ukraine-Russian conflict is creating supply problems and that Turkey does not have enough stable food, such as sunflower seed oil, in its stocks.
“Sunflower production in our country has increased significantly in the past years and total output grew 17 percent in 2021 from the previous year,” Vahit Kirişçi tweeted yesterday.
Despite the increase in output, Turkey imports sunflower oil to meet local demands which grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, the minister added.
He said that the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry is closely watching the developments related to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and taking all possible measures to prevent the possibility of supply problems of vegetable oils.
As part of those efforts, necessary work was carried out to diversify the supplier countries and secure alternative oils, Kirişçi said, noting that export of sunflower seed oil has been halted.
“Thus, level of stocks has been managed in a manner to meet domestic consumption. Moreover, the precipitation will have a positive impact on local production” he said.
Kirişçi dismissed the suggestions that Turkey has sunflower seed and sunflower seed oil which could last for just 15 days.
“Taking local production and the supplies the industry secures as well as the stocks into account, our country has enough sunflower seed oil in its stocks,” he said, adding that those claims do not reflect the truth.
Meanwhile, teams from the municipal police in several provinces in the country visited supermarkets to see if they removed sunflower seed oils and other vegetable oils from their shelves to their warehouses.
They also checked the prices of those products.
Hurriyet Daily News