Zipt, one of the world’s largest wheat importers, is exploring options for exporting Black Sea grain, which face disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Zipt, one of the world’s largest wheat importers, is exploring options for exporting Black Sea grain, which face disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Egypt has contracted to buy 180,000 tonnes of wheat from India, Supply Minister Eli Moselhi said on Sunday, less than before, a deal that is part of efforts to diversify the country’s wheat supply.
Egypt, one of the world’s largest wheat importers, is exploring options for Black Sea grain exports, which face disruptions. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
Russia and Ukraine have been Egypt’s main wheat suppliers.
The Ukraine crisis has also raised import costs for Egypt, which heavily subsidizes bread for its 70 million population.
Mr Moselhi said in May that Egypt had agreed to buy 500,000 tonnes of wheat from India, but a contract had not been signed.
India banned wheat exports in May due to low domestic production, but made allowances for countries like Egypt with food security needs.
“Based on what the supplier said, the condition was that the wheat would be at the ports, then it would be available,” Mr. Moselhi said on Sunday.
“We had agreed on 500,000 tonnes, turned out to be [the supplier] The port has 180,000 tonnes,” he said.
Mr Moselhi said Egypt was also in talks with Russian suppliers for a wheat purchase agreement.
Egypt is also looking at ways to extract more flour from its grain, Mr Moseley said, increasing the extraction percentage of flour used for subsidized bread from 82% to 87.5%.
He said it plans to save around 500,000 tonnes of imported wheat and import 5-5.5 million tonnes of wheat for the 2022/23 financial year.
The current wheat stock is enough for 5.7 months after purchasing 3.9 million tonnes of the local crop, Mr Moselhi said on Sunday.