New player bids to import wheat for Egypt’s state silos

The Future of Egypt, a sustainable agriculture agency, announced on Wednesday that it had issued a tender to import 60,000 tons of wheat from various sources.

Yet two wheat traders speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity in the evening said that the purchase was postponed indefinitely due to lack of bids.

The wheat was bound for the Egyptian Holding Company for Silos and Storage, which belongs to the Supply Ministry, according to the purchase order reviewed by Mada Masr.

This is the first time a wheat import tender has been issued by an agency that isn’t affiliated with the Supply Ministry, which supplies 100 percent of the wheat required for the government’s subsidized bread program. The government’s General Authority for Supply Commodities is normally the world’s largest wheat buyer.

Three wheat traders said that the new agency’s purchase order had been met with confusion, with some saying they would request official documentation to prove it is a government agency given it is a complete unknown in the market.

Supply Minister Sherif Farouk, appointed this year, recently said that his ministry intended to partner with Future of Egypt in areas linked to food security, namely the import of strategic commodities. Farouk said wheat imports were among the most important of these commodities in a speech he gave before Parliament in October.

The Future of Egypt was initially launched as a sustainable agriculture project in 2022. At the time, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described the project as being aimed at supporting Egypt’s food self-sufficiency and the supply of its agricultural surplus via the reclamation of around 500 million feddans of agricultural land in the New Delta.

According to privately owned news outlet Al-Shorouk, the Future of Egypt for Sustainable Agriculture was later founded by presidential decree as an agency under the supervision of the Egyptian Air Force.

It has taken on a number of roles, including the management of Lake Bardawil — which was formerly assigned to the General Authority for Fish Resources Development — and, recently, wheat purchasing.

Tags: tender, wheat, imports, Egypt