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MINSK, April 21 (Reuters) - Belarus hopes to sign a new potash supply contract with China in May, Elena Kudryavets, director general of Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) told reporters on Friday.
China is the world's largest consumer of potash, a crop nutrient, and a contract with it traditionally establishes a global price floor. The deal between China and Belarus was done at a big discount in July. price of the new contract with China could be higher than last year, according to Kudryavets: "We hope that the prices would be higher, we are working on this."
BPC's deal last year with a consortium of Chinese firms was at $219 per tonne, a 30 percent drop from the previous year.
BPC is the trading division of state-owned miner Belaruskali and is one of the key sources of the country's dollar revenue.
However, the potash market has been marked by strong competition since 2013, when Russian potash producer Uralkali URKA.MM quit a trading alliance with Belaruskali.
In addition, global potash producers are suffering from low prices for agricultural commodities and new capacity expected to be launched by several firms, including Germany's K+S SDFGn.DE project in Canada and Russia-focused Eurochem in 2017.
In March, Turkmenistan opened a $1 billion Belarusian-built potash plant, aiming to export an annual 1.2 million tonnes of fertiliser to China and India as part of its drive to diversify away from natural gas exports. and Ashgabat previously said that BPC would help with sales of Turkmenistan's potash.
However, Kudryavets said on Friday that BPC was not selling Turkmenistan's potash. She declined to comment further.
In a move which could add further pressure to the supply side of the global market, Turkmenistan said in April it invited bids for a project to build the second potash plant. president Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday his country could take part in this project. It was not clear when the plant could be built.