February 7, 2011

Egypt's state buyer has bought 170,000 tonnes of soft wheat from the US, Australia and Argentina on a free-on-board basis for shipment on March 21-31, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) said on Saturday (Feb 5).

The most populous Arab nation returned to global markets after an absence of nearly a month to buy supplies of the grain at a time when an uprising is seeking the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

Nomani Nomani, vice chairman of the GASC gave the following breakdown of the purchases:

55,000 tonnes of US soft white wheat from Glencore at US$345.50 per tonne, with agreed freight costs at US$38.08.

55,000 tonnes of Australian wheat from Louis Dreyfus at US$347 per tonne, with freight costs at US$38.

60,000 tonnes of Argentine wheat from Glencore at US$354.80/tonne, with freight costs at US$32.40 to make a total of $387.20 if loaded from one port or at US$384.70 if loaded from two ports.

Another tender to purchase hard wheat for April 1-10 shipment was cancelled, Nomani said without providing reasons.

GASC last bought wheat on the global market on January 8, and that tender was the first since pro-democracy protests erupted on January 25.

Cairo's announcement of the tender to purchase wheat comes after a spell of panic buying by restive North African and Middle Eastern countries in the wake of violent riots toppling the president of Tunisia, another major wheat importer.

Egyptian Finance Minister Samir Radwan said earlier on Saturday (Feb 5) that his ministry had allocated an extra 2.8 billion Egyptian pounds over the past two days to finance wheat purchases.

Since the start of the 2010/11 fiscal year on July 1, GASC has purchased about 4.635 million tonnes of French, US, Canadian, Australian and Argentine wheat.

In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, GASC purchased some 5.53 million tonnes of wheat from US, France, Russia, Germany, Kazakhstan and Canada at international tenders.