The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has excluded the PJSC State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine from the list of state-owned companies subject to privatization in 2017, the press service of the Agrarian Policy Ministry reported on Wednesday.

"The State Food and Grain Corporation has been excluded from the list of state-owned assets to be privatized for 2016-2017. This decision will allow improving the company's efficiency and continuing its fruitful cooperation with Chinese partners," Agrarian Minister Taras Kutovy said.

The Ministry said this decision was made also because the privatization of the State Food and Grain Corporation is impossible without consent from its main creditor - the Export-Import Bank of China.

The government in August 2010 decided to create the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine. The corporation has a chain of branches, comprised of grain storage facilities, flourmills, fodder factories and a cereals factory. The 53 subdivisions of the corporation can store a total of 3.75 million tonnes of grain, which includes the grain handling capacities of Odesa and Mykolaiv ports of some 2.5 million tonnes of grain cargo per year.

The public joint-stock company State Food-Grain Corporation in 2012 raised a government-secured loan of $1.5 billion from the Export-Import Bank of China for a 15-year project for grain export under trade agreements with China.