Wheat reserves may only last to December, warns official

Total domestic wheat supplies dropped significantly in 2013 as compared to last year, falling by 41,000 tons to 3.675 million tons, said Mamdouh Abdel Fattah, vice president of the Supply Commodities Authority.

Domestic wheat supplies were at 3.716 million tons in the same period last year.

Sharqiya Governorate took top honors this year in terms of wheat production, harvesting a reported 791,141 tons of wheat so far, with the harvesting season due to end on Wednesday, Abdel Fattah told the state-run Middle East News Agency on Monday.

Abdel Fattah added that the state paid LE9.6 billion to wheat farmers to help bolster the sector this year, out of a total of LE11 billion allocated for that purpose by the previous government.

The country’s strategic wheat reserves should last until December 15, with sugar stocks due to last another six months, oil reserves until September and rice reserves until August 15, Abdel Fattah warned.

Since the recently appointed Supply Minister Mohamed Abu Shady took office, the SCA has had to import more than 480,000 tons of wheat from abroad, he noted.

Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, with an annual consumption of about about 10 million tons per year.

Abu Shady blamed former President Mohamed Morsi for dramatically reducing wheat imports, telling Reuters it was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

A shortage in foreign reserves and a heroic attempt to make Egypt self-sufficient prompted the decision to hold back in importing wheat, which pushed imported stocks to fall to insecurely low levels.

In May, Morsi celebrated the wheat harvest season, ambitiously predicting that in two years Egypt would produce more than 80 percent of its need for wheat, and in four years would no longer need to import the crop at all.

But in mid-July, Russia's deputy agriculture minister said that Russia and other top wheat producing countries should discuss the possibility of making humanitarian grain deliveries to Egypt in the face of a critical shortage.

The statement appeared to mark a turnaround in policy. In April, Russia had refused Morsi’s request to help secure supplies of fundamental commodities during the former president’s trip to Moscow.