The General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) has agreed to purchase 175,000 tonnes of Russian wheat at an average price of $205 per tonne, Minister of Supply Khaled Hanafy announced Wednesday. The agreement comes after GASC offered an international tender on Monday to purchase wheat from global suppliers for shipment in the period from 1 to 10 September. GASC announced on its website Monday that the offers should be submitted by the suppliers at the authority's headquarters before noon on Tuesday, with the final decision to be made on the same day. The amount the authority announced it is willing to purchase was less than its actual decision to buy on Wednesday, as it declared Tuesday its willingness to buy between 50,000-60,000 tonnes. With the new purchase, the strategic reserves of local and imported wheat is sufficient until mid- February 2016. Last February, GASC signed a contract to purchase 290,000 tonnes of American wheat at an average cost of $273.11 per tonne. The wheat, which was purchased through an international tender, will be used to produce subsidised bread. The wheat was supplied between 15 and 25 April. GASC is Egypt's main buyer of wheat and one of the largest government importers of wheat in the world. Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, as domestic production is not sufficient, having reached 3.7m tonnes in 2014. The production increased this year, as the Ministry of Supply received 5m tonnes of wheat from farmers in various governorates. Furthermore, a report about trade balance released Tuesday by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) highlighted that wheat imports decreased by 7.5% in April 2015.
