Miller Magazine Issue: 141 September 2021

94 Country Profile MILLER / september 2021 And as a result, wheat consumption in Egypt is enor- mous and increases every year. Wheat consumption for the current year of 2021 is estimated at 21.1 million met- ric tons compared to 20.8 million tons from last year. Egypt, as a big wheat producer, witnessed a slight in- crease in domestic wheat production for this year, yet production numbers are still very satisfying, local wheat production reached 9 million tons for this year com- pared to 8.9 million tons from last year, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Supply, the government allocated 17 billion pounds for purchasing local wheat from farm- ers. According to the ministry, Egypt has self-sufficiency of wheat for the coming 6 months. These impressing results come in no surprise for us as millers, who are ac- quainted with the Egyptian market and who have seen and witnessed the great efforts made by the govern- ment in this field for the purposes of increasing local production. As a country in the size of Egypt, that highly depends on wheat products, local production would obviously not be enough, which leads to very large investments in wheat imports. It is expected that for the year 2021, wheat imports will reach 13 million tons in Egypt, ex- perts estimated that it would reach 13.2 million however due to reduced wheat exports from Russia, which is a main supplier for wheat in Egypt, the estimated number dropped down to 13 million, while last year wheat im- ports reached 12.5 million tons. Imported wheat in Egypt is purchased through tenders managed by the General Authority for Supply Commod- ities (GASC) in addition to imports made by the private sector directly, wheat is imported from different origins mainly Russia, Romania, and Ukraine. A great accom- plishment for the GASC this year is the 13% decrease in Egypt’s wheat import bill, due to the implementation of an integrated information system that control the man- agement, transportation and trading of wheat. The Egyptian government however is trying to re- duce the gap between wheat production and wheat import by increasing domestic production through re- claiming agricultural lands, it intends to allocate an ad- ditional one million acres for wheat cultivation within the next 3 years. The government is also increasing its strategic stor- age capacity through the National Project of Grain Silo, the project aims to build new silos among 17 governor- ates in Egypt to store wheat and grain, with a storage capacity of 1.5 million tons, making the total storage ca- pacities in Egyptian silos of about 3.6 million tons. EGYPTIAN MILLING INDUSTRY Wheat in Egypt is distributed among flour mills and pasta factories, the majority of wheat goes to flour mills and is used to produce different kinds of flour includ- ing the 82% extraction flour, which is used to produce