UAE’s Al Dahra, Abu Dhabi fund sign $500 mln deal to supply wheat to Egypt

UAE-based agribusiness Al Dahra and the Abu Dhabi Exports Office (ADEX) have signed a $500 million deal to supply Egypt with wheat, a statement said on Monday.

The five-year agreement, worth $100 million per year, will provide Egypt with imported milling wheat “at competitive prices”.

Egypt, a major buyer of basic commodities, has been suffering a foreign currency crunch after the Ukraine war delivered a broad shock to its economy.

Egypt’s currency has tumbled by about 50% against the dollar and official headline inflation has soared to an all-time high of 36.5%.

The country started deferring payments for wheat imports and has been facing an increasingly difficult task raising cash for foreign debt repayments.

“The low-cost financing package from ADEX helps us procure high quality wheat at the lowest cost financing available, with comfortable payment terms,” Egypt’s supply minister Ali Moselhy said in a statement.

Reuters first reported the deal last month.

Many recent wheat purchases have been made with loans from the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), which last year doubled a credit facility extended to Egypt to $6 billion, and from the World Bank, which funded wheat imports earlier this year.

The finance ministry said funding for subsidies on food, mostly bread, will rise 41.9% to 127.7 billion Egyptian pounds ($4.1 billion) in the fiscal year from July 2023 to June 2024.

The Emirati company already supplies the government with locally produced wheat at the government-set procurement price via its Egyptian subsidiary, which farms 28,000 hectares in Egypt.

ADEX is the export financing arm of governmental agency Abu Dhabi Fund for Development.

Tags: UAE, Egypt, wheat