Miller Magazine Issue: 148 April 2022

103 COUNTRY PROFILE MILLER / APRIL 2022 a recent press conference that Egypt has enough wheat reserves for the bread subsidy program to last until the end of 2022, pointing out that Egypt’s current strategic wheat reserves are sufficient to cover the coming four months and with the local wheat supply season, Egypt will cover five more months’ worth of stocks. The Prime Minister has also stressed that the country will not be conducting any tenders to buy wheat from the global market until the end of 2022. GASC had to cancel its last two tenders due to limited offers and very high prices from traders of French and U.S. hard red winter wheat. Traders did not offer any wheat from the Black Sea in the last two tenders amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which resulted in port closures in Ukraine and a disruption in shipping from the Black Sea. GASC has already secured 126,000 MT of French and Romanian wheat on March 5 and March 7, and is set to re- ceive another 189,000 MT from Russia, Ukraine, and Roma- nia (63,000 MT from each) by the end of March. Total wheat imports during the first two and a half months of calendar year (CY) 2022 amounted to 1.78 MMT. As of March 1-15, public and private imports of wheat that reached Egypt amounted to 460,272 MT, from Russia (181,773 MT), Ukraine (124,552 MT), Romania (91,000 MT and France (63,723 MT). These purchases were made a month before the conflict erupted. Currently, there are 17 origins approved by GASC to par- ticipate in its international tenders – United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia, Germany, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia, Latvia, Hungary, Paraguay, and Kazakhstan. The largest four ori- gins supplying wheat to GASC via its international tenders during the last five marketing years are Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and France. WHEAT PRODUCTION FAS Cairo Post forecasts Egypt’s wheat production in marketing year (MY) 2022/23 (July – June) to reach 9.8 mil- lion metric tons (MMT), up by 8.9 percent compared to 9 MMT in 2021/22. Post attributes the rise to an increase in total area harvested which is set to come in at 1.53 million hectares (HA) compared to 1.4 million HA the previous year. The government announced its wheat purchasing prices ahead of the planting season and the government plans to increase wheat harvested areas by 420,000 HA in the next three years. Wheat procurement season started on April 1, 2022, in- stead of April 15, and will last until the end of August instead of mid-July. FAS Cairo foresees Egypt in MY 2022/23 (Ju- ly-June) procuring some 5 to 5.5 MMT of locally produced wheat. The amount of locally-produced wheat purchased by the government of Egypt was 3.5 MMT in calendar year (CY) 2020 and 3.6 MMT in CY 2021. Amid the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the government took additional measures to secure the tar- get of procuring at least 5 MMT of local wheat from farmers in CY 2022. On March 15, the government approved an ad-