Egypt, the world's biggest wheat importer, bought 120,000 tonnes of wheat from Russia through new global tenders, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) said on Tuesday. The shipment is expected to be delivered between 11 and 20 December. Egypt is trying to boost ties with Russia after relations between Cairo and the United States deteriorated after the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi on 3 July following mass protests against his rule. The country's current wheat stock, including 2.8 million tons imported since August, will be enough until the beginning of March 2014, Mahmoud Diab, spokesman of the ministry of supply, told Ahram Online. On Monday, the Egyptian agriculture minister told Reuters that the state can achieve self-sufficiency in wheat for its bread subsidy programme by 2019 if silo storage capacity is raised by one million tonnes annually Egypt's current silo storage capacity is 1.5 million tonnes but the United Arab Emirates pledged part of its $4.9 billion aid package to Egypt to build 25 new wheat silos, each with a capacity of 60,000 tonnes. This would bring the country's storage capacity to 3 million tonnes by mid-2014. "The minister of agriculture was referring to the subsidised bread when he spoke of achieving self-sufficiency in wheat by 2019," added Diab. “GASC currently consumes nine million tonnes annually to provide subsidized bread, of which 3.6 million tonnes are supplied by local farmers while the remaining 5.4 million tonnes are imported.” Diab pointed out that local farmers produce up to 8.5 million tonnes of wheat annually, roughly five million of which are sold to the private sector. “In addition to the large-capacity silos, Egypt's self-sufficiency of wheat can also be achieved through encouraging farmers to increase the arable area on which wheat is grown or through using certain seeds of wheat capable of raising the productivity of each feddan from 2.5 tonnes to four tonnes,” he said. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/86941.aspx
