in 1993 and reaching $126 million in the first 3 months of 1994. 

 You indicate that that is a sizable, almost threefold increase over 

 the same period 1 year ago. 



Are these credit sales? 



Mr. Goldthwait. That statement refers to cash sales, largely of 

 consumer-oriented products. We have been greatly surprised. The 

 only person who is not surprised is our agricultural counsel in Mos- 

 cow who saw this coming, at the enormous emergence of this mar- 

 ket in Russia for these consumer-oriented products. 



Mr. Penny. That is amazing. What is the status of credit sales 

 to Russia? 



Mr. Goldthwait. As you know, we recently reached an agree- 

 ment on a rescheduling arrangement for Russian payments on debt 

 obligations falling due this year. That included a good portion that 

 are subject to our credit guarantees. That rescheduling in effect re- 

 moved the arrearages that had accumulated during the May, early 

 June period. And now Russia is technically once more eligible for 

 the allocation of credit guarantees. 



We are in the process of reviewing whether or not we believe 

 under the current circumstances Russia meets the creditworthiness 

 criterion of GSM- 102. I am looking at this from two standpoints: 

 First, from the standpoint of a private sector oriented credit guar- 

 antee program that would be based on individual bank lines that 

 we would establish, and second, from the more traditional stand- 

 point of a Government guarantee, GSM-102 credit guarantee line. 

 I can't yet tell you the results of those analyses, but they are ongo- 

 ing. 



Mr. Penny. What requests are on file at present and what quan- 

 tities and what commodities are we talking about? 



Mr. Goldthwait. Well, with respect to, shall we say, an official 

 request, there isn't really a specific request on file. There is sort 

 of a general expression of interest in purchasing on a relatively 

 near-term basis, 2 to 3 million tons. This message was conveyed by 

 the delegation that was in town here in early May. But it was a 

 rather generally stated request. 



We talked not specifically about meeting it entirely through cred- 

 it guarantees, but through sort of a combination of approaches. At 

 that time, the arrearages wouldn't let us know whether or not cred- 

 it guarantees could be made available. There are, I know, a couple 

 of specific requests on the commercial credit side that would prob- 

 ably lead to some immediate business under a private sector pro- 

 gram, but we are talking much smaller volumes. 



Mr. Penny. On page 3 of your testimony, you speak to the chang- 

 ing situation with Mexico and the scheduled reduction in tariffs on 

 corn. What volume are we projecting? What volume of sale are we 

 projecting as these tariffs come down? 



Mr. Goldthwait. I cannot give you the specific projections that 

 we have. I can produce those for the record. But in the coming sev- 

 eral years, we are looking at a growth in the Mexican market for 

 feed grains and corn of, I would say, several million tons. 



Mr. Penny. Annually? 



Mr. Goldthwait. At least a couple million tons annually. I can 

 get the precise numbers for you. 



Mr. Penny. Please send that to my office. 



