AGFACTS Newsbrief Summary - April 2010

·       The year-on-year appreciation in the nominal effective rand rate of exchange (smoothed) has moved to 24.9% as at the end of February.

·       The overall trend in the year-on-year price increases of agricultural machinery is still downwards.   The current overall year-on-year decrease in prices (smoothed) is now 5.2%.

·       The second production estimate for maize for the 2009/2010 season is 12.961 million tons.   This is 7.6% more than the production of 12.050 million tons in the 2008/2009 production season.

·       Tractor sales for March 2009 were 16.0% down on those of March last year.   Year-to-date sales were 23.0% down on those for the first three months of last year.

·       Year-to-date (3 month) self-propelled combine harvester sales were 35.4% lower than those of last year.