Agriculture minister says Russia has no shortage of foodstuffs

MOSCOW, November 1 (Itar-Tass) - Russian consumer market has no shortage of foodstuffs and there is no danger of a crisis here in the foreseeable future, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said in an interview published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily.

"Serious problems are possible only in one case, namely, if there's a shortage, but we don't have a shortage of foods now," he said in a comment on a recent statement by Paul Tomsen, the head of the IMF mission to Russia, who said recently Russia might again experience problems on the market of foods in the wake of the government's decision to lift stabilization measures.

Gordeyev recalled that the Russian farming sector harvested 80 million tons of grain this year, while in 1998, when the country lived through a major financial crisis that caused a huge hike of prices on the consumer market, grain harvest stood at a mere 47 million tons.