CAIRO (Reuters) — Egypt, the world’s top wheat importer, aims to purchase the same amount of local wheat from its farmers’ 2014 crop as it did last year, supplies minister Khaled Hanafi told Reuters on Thursday, appearing to scale back a target set by his predecessor.
“We are targeting the same amount we got from the local market last year,” Hanafi said.
Hanafi was appointed on February 26 after then Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi’s cabinet resigned unexpectedly. His predecessor Mohamed Abu Shadi had said in January that Egypt was aiming to procure four million tonnes from the 2014 crop.
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Last year, Egypt ended up only buying 3.7 million tonnes of home-grown wheat during the 2013 harvest.
Islamist President Mohamed Mursi’s government, ousted by the army last July, had aimed to purchase four million to five million tonnes of local wheat last year.
In addition to its local supply, Egypt still needs huge quantities of foreign wheat with higher gluten content to make flour suitable for subsidized bread.
It buys around 10 million tonnes from abroad to spend on the bread program, which provides loaves of bread to Egyptian at a cost of one U.S. cent each.
